Salesforce has quietly shuttered Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills as it shifts focus towards its newly released Salesforce Anywhere app. The Einstein Voice Assistant first launched in beta last year. It's an extension of the company's Einstein Voice platform and allowed users to interact with the Salesforce platform via a mobile app or smart speaker device. Salesforce claimed the AI helper was more advanced than other digital assistants on the market, such as Alexa and Cortana, as it could be taught to recognise a company's specific jargon and acronyms. Einstein Voice Skills, which debuted in beta last November, enabled developers and admins can build custom voice-powered apps for employees to replace any type of manual data entry or manual Salesforce navigation.

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.

Salesforce is hoping to make AI an indispensable part of every business with a range of smart tools and platforms. At its Dreamforce 2019 event in San Francisco this week, the software giant unveiled a host of enterprise-focused services and tools it hopes will spur on AI adoption in companies of all sizes. Salesforce also unveiled its own-brand smart speaker (pictured above) modelled on its Einstein AI mascot, although whether it will go on general sale is still unclear. This growth in business-focused AI is set to be powered by a major expansion to Einstein Voice Assistant, which allows Salesforce users to communicate directly to the platform and get answers instantly. Einstein Voice Assistant is now able to be tailored to any particular industry, allowing for custom-built skills that can cover tasks from checking order history to sentiment tracking.