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While Siri Grows, Vlingo Brings Voice Control To TV

This article is more than 10 years old.

Apple's Siri voice-recognition service has taken off in the mainstream since its inclusion in the iPhone 4S.

While Siri popularized voice recognition, startup Vlingo has been developing voice recognition for a number of years on mobile. At CES this week, Vlingo launched a TV version of its technology called Virtual Assistant to help people quickly find any movie or television show via voice. Vlingo is jumping into the battle going on between TV hardware makers on the one hand, and cable or satellite operators on the other hand. Both types of companies want to control the user interface that consumers use to access television shows as well as other content and apps on the new class of "smart TVs." Also looming is Google TV which is also trying to control this space. Meanwhile, on December 20, 2011, Vlingo agreed to be acquired by its larger rival Nuance Communications, though that deal has not yet closed.

Originally Vlingo built a service that enables people to speak to a mobile app to send text messages or email. For example, if you say, “Send a text to Joe Smith,” Vlingo does speech processing in the cloud, grabs Joe Smith’s phone number from the phone’s contact list and then asks to confirm before sending the text. The service can also be used in a “car mode” for hands-free texting. To activate Vlingo, you speak a special code word. For example, say “Hey Vlingo” and Vlingo will respond, “What would you like me to do?” Then you can say “Send message to Mike Jones. What time is the meting?” Vlingo also has driving directions with turn-by-turn navigation. Like Siri, Vlingo can also find the closest pizza restaurant.

Now Cambridge, Mass.-based Vlingo has launched voice recognition technology for television. The product, called Virtual Assistant, is designed to make it simple input a variety of commands to the TV just by speaking.  The white label service is targeting TV manufacturers, set-top box makers and other service providers.

Vlingo’s new service enables people to search for a show by just saying “Watch the Price is Right” or “Find western movies starring Clint Eastwood.” For anyone who has used the bewildering user interfaces for cable services, this could be a big benefit by making it much easier to find content. They can also record a show by saying things like “Record the game on ESPN next Monday at 8pm.”

A number of hardware makers such as LG and Samsung are adding voice recognition technology to their televisions. But Dave Grannan, CEO of Vlingo, says the controls on these other services are more basic with much less sophistication than Vlingo's natural language processing. For cable and satellite operators Vlingo is attractive, Grannan says, because no additional features are required. Users can do all the voice controls of the TV from their phones – the controls are done through the cloud online and then sent back to the TV. One challenge is for Vlingo to be able to access all of the content on various platforms--from cable or satellite to online services like Netflix or Hulu and "boxes" such as Roku or Boxee. Grannan believes Vlingo can aggregate this content and make it easier to find.

Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo and AT&T. Watch a video about Vlingo's TV Virtual Assistant below:

For complete CES coverage, visit forbes.com/ces.