Togg Taps SoundHound to Bring AI to Smart Vehicles

Voice artificial intelligence firm SoundHound has teamed with Turkish mobility provider Togg.

The partnership, announced Thursday (Aug. 17), adds SoundHound’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to recently launched Togg’s smart vehicles.

“Through SoundHound’s extensive library of content domains – including co-developed vehicle control services – Togg users can use voice commands to play music, lock doors, open the trunk, change the temperature, switch lights, and access information about local charging stations and battery range,” the companies said in a news release. “SoundHound’s voice technology is also available in 25 different languages.”

According to the release, users can control their smart vehicles just as they would by addressing another person. The technology will also offer personal touches, including custom wake words such as “Hello Togg.”

PYMNTS spoke with SoundHound CEO Keyvan Mohajer in March about advances in voice AI, improved speech recognition and synergistic integrations with large language models (LLMs) —  ChatGPT-4 in particular — and the change that this technology promises.

“[When voice AI first started] consumers wanted to have those sci-fi-style, open-ended conversations [with robots], and many were disappointed because the tools at that time could only play music, set timers, tell you the weather,” Mohajer told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

He added that these “utility occasions” had an added downside, in that it led consumers to view AI applications with reduced expectations. 

Now, as digital tools evolve, AI solutions and platforms can employ personalized information and offer real-time responses to complex queries, potentially paving the way for a new era of conversational-driven commerce.

“We are trying to combine the best of both the generative AI large language models, which can answer a lot of questions and handle real-time information, with more utility-driven features, and then arbitrate [that combination],” Mohajer said. “The utility domains are good for [direct] assistance, while the LLMs can answer complex questions in real-time, so when they are combined, there’s a real value proposition.”

More recently, PYMNTS looked at the use of AI voice assistants at home.

“The simple fact,” that June report said, “is that people like voice, and if anything, they believe it’s high time for the LLM upgrade as they would like to use voice in digital commerce as they have for millennia in other retail settings, from the bazaars of old to the eCommerce capabilities of the 21st century.”

And research by PYMNTS shows that upwards of 60% of consumers think that voice assistants will eventually be as smart and as reliable as humans, with many saying they would be willing to pay for such a service.