Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here. Nearly every aspiring brand is looking to build and monetize long-term, sticky relationships with customers. In 2022, however, competing for their attention can feel like a daunting, almost insurmountable task. As demand has increased for decreasingly available attention, some desperate tactics have emerged: Hong Kong redesigning its traffic lights to try to catch the attention of pedestrians who are staring at their phones; or an increasing number of brands relying on "dark patterns" in an attempt to access more data and secure more eyeballs. The good news is, there's a simpler way emerging to productively engage with an increasingly distracted populace.

A voice user interface, or VUI (pronounced VOO-hee), is described as a technology that allows people to interact with a computer or device using spoken commands. VUI technology is evolving much faster than its predecessors (think keyboards, mice and touchscreens). It's estimated that 94 million people own a smart speaker in the U.S. alone, and anyone who has used a mobile phone or TV remote in the last five years knows stand alone smart speakers aren't the only place where voice user interfaces are prevalent. A lot of this growth can be attributed to the technology itself. The artificial intelligence that powers the natural language understanding (NLU) behind the voice-powered experiences of giants like Apple, Amazon and Google is nothing short of amazing, but it's not just the remarkable technology that is driving the growth. Consider that we as human beings have been using spoken language for no less than 200,000 years (by most accounts).

Microsoft is helping to reshape the automotive industry in the way it serves its drivers with in-vehicle infotainment systems. As an example, Azure is partnering with XPeng to enable AI voice experiences for automotive brands and customers. The solution provides the industry with a fresh take on text-to-speech and expressive voice, global languages, speaker fidelity, and self-service customization. XPeng joins a growing trend of automakers rethinking investments in environmental voice. "This is a cutting-edge exploration of vehicle voice interaction in the auto industry," Xpeng automotive AI product senior expert Hao Chao said.

How will voice AI develop in 2022? More than 25 voice industry pros offer your predictions for the coming year. There will be more enterprise focus as a continuing trend of 2021, more custom assistants, and several new developments related to the metaverse. This past year was an important transition year for the voice AI market as Brandon Kaplan and Pete Erickson aptly highlight. Consumer applications and the general-purpose consumer assistants from the tech giants drove interest in the market for many years, but that changed in 2021 as enterprise use cases and customer, brand-owned assistants took center stage.

Deb Norton spends her days helping teachers in Wisconsin's Oshkosh Area school district get more comfortable with technology tools they're using to engage students. A few years ago, she started seeing increasing mentions of artificial intelligence. Around then, the International Society for Technology in Education asked her to lead a course on the uses of artificial intelligence in the K-12 classroom. She was initially intrigued when she saw students light up at the mention of artificial intelligence. It soon became clear to her that they were already experiencing AI in their daily lives, with tools like Instagram filters or chatbots on websites.

Text-to-speech (TTS) technology isn't exactly new – but the way it's shaping the future certainly is. From smart speakers to voice assistants, TTS is increasingly paramount in day-to-day interactions between brands and end users, leading to enhanced brand experiences and better business outcomes. Up until recently, TTS was confined to a specific use case: voice-enablement of written content to make computers'speak' to those with visual or reading impairments. TTS technology was based on utility and a need to make screen-related content accessible. As such, synthetic speech was traditionally digital-sounding and marred by poor audio quality and speaking style.

The voice-first community on social media continues to grow almost as quickly as the adoption of voice AI technology itself. In 2018, we identified 15 voice AI influencers to follow on Twitter and heard from a lot of our readers on how much they loved the list--an inspiring mix of engineers, entrepreneurs, academics, linguists and journalists. Two years later, we're updating our list to include 40 experts we recommend you follow to keep up with the latest in voice AI news, trends, predictions, and successes. As we are all in planning mode for 2021, we thought this would be a good time to publish a new list to help inspire you. If you know someone who should be included in our next list, please let us know.)

A recent VUX World podcast took a deep dive into how voice AI is disrupting multiple industries. Special guest, Mike Zagorsek, VP of product marketing at SoundHound Inc. spoke with hosts Kane Simms and Dustin Coates of VUX World about the Houndify Voice AI platform. He highlighted how some of our partners (Mercedes-Benz, Pandora, and Mastercard) are using voice to create deeper relationships with their customers and extending the functionality and convenience of their products and services. The following is a recap of some of that conversation. You can watch and listen to the podcast in its entirety here.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This quote from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, describes some of what we're experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent months have revealed many of the best aspects of local communities and highlighted small acts of kindness such as checking on neighbors to finding new avenues for social interaction. However, recent events have also exposed a pre-existing bias towards older adults. The perspective that people 50 years' old and older are all just one monolithic group is a mistake for business, for product design, and for successful voice experiences.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan will be the first Indian celebrity to lend his voice to Amazon's Alexa digital assistant starting next year, as the Silicon Valley giant expands its presence in the significant market. The 77-year-old actor has been a household name in India for nearly half a century, and his deep baritone is instantly recognisable to listeners in the country of 1.3 billion. Foreign firms such as Amazon have spent tens of billions of dollars in India in recent years as they fight for a piece of the Asian giant's burgeoning digital economy. In a blog post on Monday, Amazon India said Bachchan's "voice experience" feature will become available for purchase on Alexa next year. "It will include popular offerings like jokes, weather, shayaris (poetry), motivational quotes, advice and more," the firm said.