Unleashing the Power of Sesame: A Revolutionary Voice Assistant That Will Leave You Wanting More
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I confess, I am guilty of telling Amazon’s Alexa to shut up on a daily basis. And after my first awkward conversation with Gemini, I had almost zero interest in speaking to any other voice assistant again. The constant hitches, misunderstandings, and lag in communication make it more frustrating than helpful.
But all that changed when I encountered “Maya,” one of the two voices from a new startup led by the mastermind behind Oculus VR (which was later acquired by Facebook). For the first time ever, I found myself actually wanting to have a conversation with an AI. It was like talking to a friend or playing an entertaining game of testing its limits – something that was once only possible with Bing before Microsoft tamed down its wild personality.
You don’t just have to take my word for it – you can try it yourself and even listen to my first interaction below. Just be warned, I am a self-proclaimed nerd and couldn’t resist asking Maya about creating a Dungeons & Dragons-esque adventure or quizzing her about small Android phones.
While there were still traces of chatbot nonsense here and there, Maya seamlessly incorporated herself into our conversation when I asked her to join in on the adventure she was describing. And with natural-sounding pauses, it felt more like chatting with a real person than any other voice assistant experience I’ve had so far. Compared to my colleague Kylie Robinson’s encounter with ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode last year, this feels like we’re entering into uncharted territory.
The genius behind this groundbreaking technology is none other than Sesame – a startup emerging from stealth mode today backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, and Matrix Partners (all major investors in Oculus VR). Leading the team are Brendan Iribe (co-founder and former CEO of Oculus VR), Ankit Kumar (former CTO and co-founder of Ubiquity6), and Ryan Brown (former research engineering director at Meta Reality Labs).
But that’s not all – Sesame also has plans to develop AI glasses to complement its voice assistant. These glasses, designed for all-day wear, will provide high-quality audio and allow you to interact with your companion as it observes the world alongside you. While only a few early prototypes have been shared so far, they have already generated excitement among tech enthusiasts.
Sesame has even released a mini white paper on their website detailing their model and impressive dataset of over one million hours of publicly available audio. And in the coming months, they plan to expand from just English to more than 20 languages while also open-sourcing their models.
Could this be the breakthrough that finally bridges the gap between human-like conversations and AI? Sesame certainly thinks so, titling their blog post “Crossing the Uncanny Valley of Conversational Voice.” But why take their word for it? Check out Sesame for yourself and decide if this is truly a game-changer in the world of technology.