Cerence Launches Cerence ARK Assistant—a Turnkey Automotive Voice Assistant

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Cerence Inc., AI for a world in motion, introduced Cerence ARK Assistant, a new turnkey automotive voice assistant in U.S. English. This new product is built on Cerence voice- and AI-based innovations and expands upon the company’s initial off-the-shelf assistant for the Chinese market that launched late last year.

Cerence plans to deliver the product in additional languages as well.

Cerence ARK Assistant provides OEMs the ability to quickly develop, deploy and manage an automotive voice assistant without sacrificing the performance, flexibility and breadth of capabilities that Cerence is known for. It is a turnkey product that combines in-car technology and cloud services to help automakers accelerate the time it takes to create a voice assistant. Cerence ARK Assistant fulfills a special need in the market by combining decades of innovation, experience and service into a ready-to-go assistant for mainstream vehicles—speeding time to market by 50% or more.

In order to stay competitive, automotive companies need to quickly deploy intelligent voice- and AI-based assistants across model years as demand for these services among drivers continues to accelerate. According to a recent report by Voicebot.ai, in-car voice assistant usage is growing in the U.S.—with active users increasing approximately 15% in the past 15 months.

Furthermore, approximately 60% of U.S. adults say voice assistants are a factor they consider when buying a new car, with 20% considering it a high priority.

“As in-car voice assistant usage grows exponentially and consumers demand access, we are proud of this milestone development of Cerence ARK Assistant to help automakers deliver robust solutions to stay ahead of their competition,” said Stefan Ortmanns, EVP and General Manager, Core Products at Cerence. “With these new packaged innovations, we offer OEMs decades of experience building state-of-the-art voice solutions, plus the agility to get to market in just three to six months.”

As automakers and suppliers are compelled to innovate at unprecedented speeds to meet consumer demand for voice assistants, Cerence ARK Assistant allows them to offer an exceptional experience and content for drivers and passengers with minimal customization or tuning. Key capabilities and benefits include:

• Speech recognition: Get it right the first time.
  Gain access to the world’s premier speech recognition and natural language understanding. Out of the box, the assistant can have not only the best accuracy, but also the best completion rates.
• Voice output: The quality speaks for itself.
  The world’s most natural, human-like voice output, known as Text-to-Speech (TTS), provides an immersive and interactive in-car experience for drivers and passengers.
• Content and services: A concierge in your dashboard.
  Cerence supports the most popular domains, skills and content services to deliver a personal assistant experience. Looking for directions? Need to find a charging station? Want to hear Top-40 hits? All this and more are enabled by Cerence’s deep domain expertise.
• Vehicle integration: We know our way around a cockpit.
  Cerence has been building automotive voice assistants for more than two decades, so we know the ins and outs of vehicles. Cerence ARK Assistant is already trained to integrate with the hundreds of sensors, circuits and systems within a car. While other assistants on the market have to learn to work in an auto environment, Cerence was born for this.
• Data privacy: Personal information is a new currency.
  Data is king in today’s information age, and there is no reason to give up personal customer information to your vendors to use for their financial gain. Cerence protects OEM and customer data and does not share it with third-party organizations.
• Open for collaboration: We can all get along.
  Built for Android, but open to most other operating systems, Cerence ARK Assistant is truly interoperable. Rather than getting locked into a specific OS, Cerence offers OEMs the flexibility to choose the one that’s right for them—whether it’s QNX, Linux, LG, Microsoft or others.
• Flexible and modular: Make it your own.
  OEMs and developers will be able to own the in-car experience with access to Cerence Studio tools and the Cerence world-class professional services team to guide customization efforts.