SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SoundHound Inc.®, a pioneering company in sound recognition and search technologies, ushers in a new era of mobile computing with the launch of Hound®. Hound is a mobile voice interface, downloadable as an app, which gives users the ability to speak naturally and get deep results to what they ask for, such as looking up the weather, placing a phone call, sending a text message, finding a hotel that matches their detailed criteria, navigating to an address, finding their flight status, checking the stock market, searching and playing music, and even playing interactive games.
While older voice services use word and phrase detection to generate search results, Hound combines voice recognition and natural language understanding in real-time to deliver the fastest and most accurate results seen on a mobile voice service to-date. Hound is now in private beta for Android, with a launch on iOS coming soon.
Known publicly as the company behind SoundHound, the music search, discovery and play app with more than 260 million unique downloads globally, SoundHound Inc. has been in stealth mode with its voice technology research and development over the last decade, quietly building the technology ingredients and a product that elegantly solves the challenge of enabling fast and accurate voice search when people speak naturally.
Three specific technology underpinnings make Hound unique:
- A brand new technology that combines speech recognition and natural language understanding simultaneously and in real-time. Compared to traditional approaches that perform speech recognition first, then send the result to a search or understanding engine, Hound’s Speech-to-Meaning engine delivers unprecedented speed and accuracy.
- The ability to handle complex, natural language sentences, including compound criteria, exclusions and negation. This empowers users to speak more naturally, and be more detailed and specific, versus speaking in key-word fragments.
- The ability to evolve more rapidly through SoundHound Inc.’s new developer platform, Houndify™. This allows rapid development cycles, inclusion of new domains, and the ability to scale faster than traditional voice technology solutions. In turn, users will be able to Hound even more topics, experience interactive information search, and even play voice-enabled games.
Hound can become second-nature to those seeking reliable, accurate and quick search results, and doing assistant-like tasks such as navigating, sending email and text messages, and setting an alarm or a timer. Hound is not a “personality,” but instead a verb that enables a swift and intuitive interface alternative to typing, tapping and swiping.
"Hound will redefine the way we interact with devices, information, and services," said Keyvan Mohajer, founder and CEO, SoundHound Inc. "We believe in a world where we speak to the things around us just as we speak to each other, and we have worked tirelessly for nearly a decade to create the technology that realizes this vision."
Hound will launch with an arsenal of “domains,” with general web search considered one domain. Others include everyday use-case tasks or searches such as: navigation, local search, weather, stocks, hotels, time zones, geography, news, photo and video search, mortgage calculation, currency conversion, flight status, and many more.
Global online travel brand Expedia.com® is amongst Hound’s launch partners, whose real-time pricing and amenities for hotels around the world surfaces when a user Hounds for a hotel, by saying, for example, “show me pet-friendly hotels near the Golden Gate Bridge, with three or more stars under $200, excluding bed and breakfast.”
“Being the innovation leader in travel, Expedia is thrilled to be the first to showcase the power of natural language search through Hound,” said John Kim, CPO of Expedia.com. “Now a user can Hound a hotel room with a specific location, dates, price range, and amenities, instantly receiving results that match their desired criteria – and then book seamlessly with Expedia, all from their mobile phone.”
Houndify
With the vision to enable other apps, connected devices, and, ultimately, the Internet of Things, SoundHound Inc. also introduces Houndify, a developer platform to create a smart, voice-enabled, conversational interface to anything. The Houndify platform is simple for developers to use and enables them to leverage SoundHound Inc.’s Speech-to-Meaning technology and deploy their experiences across all major platforms. This means that innovators across major industries such as automotive, retail, quick-serve restaurants, consumer electronics, entertainment, finance, and medical devices, as well as individual developers who build mobile apps, can leverage the technology behind Hound. Once integrated with the voice interface capability, their respective product, service or experience becomes Houndified.
"Houndify is an operating system-agnostic, one-stop destination for all the necessary technology components, including fast and accurate large-scale speech recognition, powerful natural language understanding, and numerous existing Houndified domains," added Mohajer. "These technologies take years to develop, and are generally not available to new startups or even larger companies. By opening Houndify as a developer platform, we aim to empower developers of all levels to create and innovate, because they understand their offering better than anyone else."
Press interested in obtaining access to the Hound private beta should contact pr@soundhound.com.
All others interested in joining the beta can download Hound from the Google Play store and request an invitation.
To learn more about Hound, please visit http://www.soundhound.com/hound/video.
About SoundHound Inc.
SoundHound Inc. turns sound into understanding and actionable meaning.
We believe in enabling humans to interact with the things around them in the same way we interact with each other: by speaking naturally to mobile phones, cars, TVs, music speakers, coffee machines, and every other part of the emerging 'connected' world. Our latest product, Hound, leverages our speech-to-meaning technology to showcase a ground-breaking smartphone experience. Our SoundHound product applies our technology to music, enabling people to discover, explore, and share the music around them, and even find the name of that song stuck in their heads by singing or humming. And through the Houndify platform, we empower developers to be part of the Speech-to-Meaning revolution. Mission: Houndify everything.
About Expedia.com
Expedia.com is one of the world's largest full service travel sites*, helping millions of travelers per month easily plan and book travel. Expedia.com (http://www.expedia.com/, 1-800-EXPEDIA) aims to provide the latest technology and the widest selection of top vacation destinations, cheap tickets, hotel deals, car rentals, destination weddings, cruise deals and in-destination activities, attractions, services and travel apps. With the Expedia Best Price Guarantee, Expedia.com customers can get the best rates available online for all types of travel.
Expedia and Expedia.com are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Expedia, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the property of their respective owners © 2014 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. CST # 2029030-50
