It is estimated that around 20% of the British public own and regularly use a voice assistant such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant.
As an antidote to the “sterile feel” and “problematic associations” of their default soothing female (American) voices, the BBC has chosen to give its soon-to-launch equivalent, Beeb, which gets a limited release this week, a “warm and friendly” Northern male voice, writes The Guardian‘s Media Editor Jim Waterson.
This is a clear attempt by the Corporation to defend itself against the threat of major US companies directing BBC audiences to their content and to maintain a direct relationship with both audiences and license fee payers.
“It gives us a strategic edge if Amazon decide not to play fair in terms of how people access the content,. There has to be an alternative to them holding all the cards. We do have the content. Amazon may choose to change the game of discovery.”
Grace Boswood, COO, BBC Design & Engineering
The plan appears to be to incorporate Beeb into existing technology, including the BBC Sounds app, rather than for the BBC to develop its own boxes. At the moment, while in Beta it leans heavily on Microsoft’s Azure AI services.
To begin with, Beeb can be used to find BBC radio programmes, music streams and podcasts, but this will clearly expand to iPlayer and other services as its development continues towards and beyond its full release.