Sanas.ai launches first platform that boosts communication
To foster seamless communication in all areas of business, education, telemedicine, entertainment and more, Sanas is releasing a real-time speech accent translation solution.
With no noticeable lag and edge deployment, the patent-pending Sanas software intercepts audio and converts accents through a speech-to-speech approach, building a virtual bridge between the audio device and the computer, and then sending the new signal to whichever communication app (Zoom, Hangouts, etc.) is in use, according to the vendor.
Almost instantly, the accent of a customer care representative, for example, will be matched to the accent of an incoming caller.
“The world has shrunk, and people are doing business globally, while at the same time they have real difficulty understanding each other. Even getting Google Home or Alexa to understand accents accurately is extremely important," said Sanas' CEO, Maxim Serebryakov. "Digital communication is critical for our daily lives. Sanas is striving to make communication easy and free from friction, so people can speak confidently and understand each other, wherever they are and whoever they are trying to communicate with."
The solution will be used by seven BPOs (Business Process Outsourcers) globally starting in the fall of this year. The company is also announcing it’s receiving $5.5 million seed round of funding.
Top venture funds investing in the company's $5.5 million seed round include Human Capital, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and DN Capital. Speech industry veterans joining Sanas' Board of Advisors include Wendell Brown (Co-founder, Liveops, Teleo, eVoice) and Steven G. Chambers (former President of Nuance). The funds will be used to expand the engineering team and to introduce the software in more global markets.
Sanas was created by a team of Stanford student engineers and top speech machine learning experts. The first application for the technology is in customer care centers, an industry where accent issues can be particularly problematic.
Internal studies from Sanas showed increased foreign language learner fluency, as well as decreased word error rate (15% on industry-leading automatic speech recognition devices or ASRs).
The idea for Sanas was inspired by the experience of three international friends from Russia, China, and Venezuela, all of whom have very different accents. They witnessed firsthand the communication struggle due to accents, and saw a mutual friend quit his job because of this challenge. They realized that there had to be a better way to communicate, according to the vendor.
For more information about this news, visit https://sanas.ai/.