Why Salesforce is killing off Einstein Voice Assistant

Salesforce is shutting down two of its AI-powered voice services -- Einstein Voice Assistant and Voice Skills -- as it shifts resources toward its newly released Salesforce Anywhere app, as spotted by Voicebot.ai. A company spokesperson told VentureBeat that voice capabilities remain "a priority" for Salesforce, and that the products it's discontinuing will inform the development of "reimagined" functionality focused on productivity and collaboration. Einstein Voice Assistant, which launched in beta last year, was a component of Salesforce's Einstein Voice -- an outgrowth of the company's Einstein technology that enables customers to navigate cloud services hands-free. One of its ostensible advantages over other platforms was its versatility: It was siloed, restricting data pulls to individual users' accounts, and it could be "taught" to recognize jargon, acronyms, and slang in an organization's lexicon. Einstein Voice Assistant was more than a glorified transcriber.