Microsoft acquires Nuance Communications [2021-04-12]

eastmen said:
money sitting in accounts right now is doing nothing for them. Will be interesting to see what they do with the tech but they seemed to have completely killed cortana so i dunno
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I saw in an article that their Dragon dictation software has been integrated into teams for the azure healthcare vertical. They also formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft over the future of healthcare in 2019.

If you've got boatloads of cash burning a hole in your pocket I can think of worse acquisitions
(And better one, Take2 is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from $16B)

Microsoft and Nuance partner on the exam room of the future
 
liams said:
I saw in an article that their Dragon dictation software has been integrated into teams for the azure healthcare vertical. They also formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft over the future of healthcare in 2019.

If you've got boatloads of cash burning a hole in your pocket I can think of worse acquisitions
(And better one, Take2 is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from $16B)

Microsoft and Nuance partner on the exam room of the future
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There is Azure Healthcare?

I wonder if it can be integrated into gaming via procedural voice generation from speech or something. I mean Cyberpunk used something like this? Maybe they can make it a part of Game Stack in the future.
 
ChuckeRearmed said:
There is Azure Healthcare?

I wonder if it can be integrated into gaming via procedural voice generation from speech or something. I mean Cyberpunk used something like this? Maybe they can make it a part of Game Stack in the future.
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Microsoft offers what they call 'cloud verticals', which are basically collections of services and software that they bundle together for different industries. they are only just starting to roll out these verticals and Healthcare is one of them. Another is gaming.

I dont think this would really impact gaming at all, the only thing I can think of that would touch xbox at all is using the dragon dictation software for better speech to text if that was a feature that they wanted to use

Microsoft already has the technology to do what cyberpunk did with generated voices, they call them 'voice fonts', and at the moment are used for things like automated customer service, I would honestly be surprised if they didnt use it in their games in the future, they sound pretty good! You can also make custom voices by uploading a persons voice saying a bunch of words and sentences, I saw somewhere that it needs roughly 2000 spoken words to make a new voice font

Theres an example app where you can write whatever you want then choose what voice to use
Text to Speech | Microsoft Azure

heres an article on the healthcare vertical which gives a better explanation than I did
Microsoft's first 'vertical cloud,' the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, is now generally available | ZDNet
 
liams said:
Microsoft already has the technology to do what cyberpunk did with generated voices, they call them 'voice fonts', and at the moment are used for things like automated customer service, I would honestly be surprised if they didnt use it in their games in the future, they sound pretty good! You can also make custom voices by uploading a persons voice saying a bunch of words and sentences, I saw somewhere that it needs roughly 2000 spoken words to make a new voice font
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Honestly it would be pretty useful for games where you have a bunch of NPCs that have to say similar things with limited interactivity. Like, think of a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but instead of the one voice saying "Get out of here stalker" you could have dozens with slightly different inflection and accent.
 
see colon said:
Honestly it would be pretty useful for games where you have a bunch of NPCs that have to say similar things with limited interactivity. Like, think of a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but instead of the one voice saying "Get out of here stalker" you could have dozens with slightly different inflection and accent.
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Still not used to phrases from Stalker in English.

Considering new UE tools for facial animations and face generation, tools for voice generation that are more or less widely available would be neat.
 
see colon said:
Honestly it would be pretty useful for games where you have a bunch of NPCs that have to say similar things with limited interactivity. Like, think of a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but instead of the one voice saying "Get out of here stalker" you could have dozens with slightly different inflection and accent.
Click to expand...

Looking at the game stack live talk descriptions it looks like they are going to start selling the voice font stuff as a solution to localisation. If you have gone to the effort to translate the subtitles in a game you have also got a believable auto-generated voice that you can use.

Seems like a pretty smart plan to me, especially because as far as I know the only fully voiced option for all of microsofts first party games is english, adding good AI voices would improve support in other regions
 
Sxotty said:
I found cortana worked quite well. Not sure that buying them makes sense when all they get are some clients.
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This is really about pushing the Azure Healthcare vertical. Nuance has a huge percentage of the Healthcare market when it comes to the products they put out, so it's a huge value add to that Azure segment. They want to win that market before AWS manages to get into it in a bigger way. It's a strategic purchase.
 
And it's completed.

"Microsoft has completed its acquisition of AI speech tech company Nuance for $19.7 billion. It's Microsoft's second-biggest acquisition until Activision Blizzard closes, and will see the company take on Nuance's Dragon software"

https://twitter.com/x/status/1499772990850048001
 
Interesting I was once approached by a recruiter about a job at Nuance. I think at the time their main product was IVR.

Isn’t Dragon the old IBM brand name for speech recognition?
 
wco81 said:
Isn’t Dragon the old IBM brand name for speech recognition?
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Yup I used it for a few years. I don't remember all the details about whether IBM just licensed it or whether it was a partnership.

Also, most people don't know that Siri was a collaboration between Nuance and Apple.

Regards,
SB
 
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