INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
French startup Snips has been working on voice assistant technology that respects your privacy
And the company is going to use its own voice assistant for a set of consumer devices
As part of this consumer push, the company is also announcing an initial coin offering.
Yes, it sounds a bit like Snips is playing a game
Anyone can currently download the open source Snips SDK and play with it with a Raspberry Pi, a microphone and a speaker
It private by design, you can even make it work without any internet connection
Companies can partner with Snips to embed a voice assistant in their own devices too.
But Snips is adding a B2C element to its business
This time, the company is going to compete directly with Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers
You&ll be able to buy the Snips AIR Base and Snips AIR Satellites.
The base will be a good old smart speaker, while satellites will be tiny
portable speakers that you can put in all your rooms
The company plans to launch those devices in 18 months.
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By default, Snips
devices will come with basic skills to control your smart home devices, get the weather, control music, timers, alarms, calendars and
Unlike the Amazon Echo or Google Home, voice commands won&t be sent to Google or Amazon servers.
Developers will be able to create skills
and publish them on a marketplace
That marketplace will run on a new blockchain — the AIR blockchain.
And that where the ICO comes along
The marketplace will accept AIR tokens to buy more skills
You&ll also be able to generate training data for voice commands using AIR tokens
To be honest, I&m not sure why good old credit card transactions weren&t enough
But I guess that a good way to raise money.
