Crestron Home clients can now control AV content using Josh.ai natural voice commands without the need for a professional integrator to program scenes or quick actions, emailed the voice control company Tuesday. Josh.ai will be able to communicate with a home’s devices and find “specific content with compatible service providers,” said the company. An installer is required for authorization of the Crestron Home hub and AV distribution; after both authorization steps are completed, Josh.ai auto-populates compatible devices programmed within Crestron Home’s interface, said the company. The voice engine also works natively with Crestron Home’s lights, shades, thermostats, locks, scenes and quick actions.

Continental and Elektrobit announced Tuesday the first in-vehicle integration of Alexa Custom Assistant, enabling automakers to create their own branded intelligent assistants using Alexa AI. The debut is at the virtual Alexa Live 2021 developer event July 21 at 1:15 p.m. EDT. The implementation combines Alexa Custom Assistant with Continental’s Cockpit computer and EB's software and integration services. The automotive cockpit is becoming more complex with more displays, cameras, sensors and advanced features, said Jens Brandt, head-human machine interface, Continental North America. Consumers expect a seamless experience, and user experience is becoming a top differentiator for carmakers, he said. “Advances in AI are making voice experiences in the car more natural, conversational and user-friendly,” said Ned Curic, vice president-Alexa Auto. Carmakers can join the session live by registering here.

Amazon beefed up video capabilities of its Echo Show smart displays, including adding Zoom support combined with Alexa control. Users can join Zoom calls by saying, “Alexa join my Zoom meeting,” it said Wednesday, announcing preorders for the devices due to ship next month. The second-gen Echo Show 8 (starting at $129) has a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera vs. the first-edition 1-megapixel version, adaptive color and offers digital pan and zoom. Friends can share photos to the display. The revamped Echo Show 5 ($85) has double the pixels on its HD camera; a kids’ version starts at $95 and includes a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+. The smart displays have mic and camera controls and the ability to view and delete voice recordings. All new-generation devices come with built-in shutters to cover the camera.

SoundHound expanded its Houndify Voice AI platform to 22 languages as part of a road map to add more than 100, blogged the company Wednesday. Houndify's Speech-to-Meaning and Deep Meaning Understanding technologies, plus advances in automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding, allow the platform to track speech in real time -- “understanding the meaning even before the user has finished speaking,” said the company. Available languages include English, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Indian-accented English, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Sleep sensing is a main feature of Google’s latest Nest Hub, launched Tuesday. The contactless sleep-sensing feature, which uses a miniature radar sensor from Soli, detects movement and gestures “at the micrometer level,” such as breathing, to give users information about sleep duration, routines and quality, Google said. The unit doesn't have a camera, and faces aren’t detected, it said. The device can offer personalized suggestions based on the information, through Google’s Sleep Sensing app, “free until next year,” when it may become part of a Fitbit subscription, Google said. Users are able to watch YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ and view Google Photos on the 7-inch screen. The $99 device, with Google Assistant built in, offers hands-free calling via a Google Duo account; users can control it using gestures, said the company. The second-generation Hub has a single speaker with a 1.7-inch driver vs. the dual 0.7-inch tweeters and 3-inch woofer in the $229 Hub Max, which adds a built-in camera for video calls and home monitoring.

Universal Electronics Inc. signed Instreamatic’s AI-based voice dialog marketing platform for set-top boxes and smart TVs, it said Thursday. The platform’s ad exchange allows publishers and advertisers to manage, measure and monetize content with conversational ads; they can also use their existing ad tech solutions. Conversational ads have been largely limited to mobile experiences; UEI wants to bring them to smart TVs and video service providers with personalized context via its QuickSet platform. The company will enable “improved monetization opportunities to our customers,” said Arsham Hatambeiki, senior vice president-product and technology, saying a conversational ad experience “will streamline introduction of improved ad delivery as another reason for adoption of voice control in entertainment systems.” Intelligently delivered conversational ads boost audience engagement and recall, while “significantly improving ad spend [return on investment] and customer insights,” said Instreamatic CEO Stas Tushinskiy.

Apple didn’t comment Monday on reports it’s discontinuing the HomePod smart speaker. Apple.com showed the space gray version of the $299 Siri-controlled speaker as “sold out,” the white still available. Tech Crunch reported Friday Apple said it's focusing its efforts on the $99 HomePod mini, launched in October. The original HomePod, launched in 2017 at $349 and later dropped by $50, is being discontinued, said the report.

Chipmaker QuickLogic in Q4 “finally" completed certification testing of its “voice-activated hearable reference design” with Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service team, said CEO Brian Faith on a fiscal Q4 earnings call Wednesday. “This has been a long and difficult process taking much longer than we ever thought. The delay was brought on by challenges working with the communications chip that was not ours.” QuickLogic also needed to overcome COVID-19 work restrictions “that prevented our engineering team from working on site to solve the issues,” said Faith. “In spite of these challenges, we persevered.” QuickLogic also completed work on a second “voice-related project” late in Q4, ended Jan. 3. The second project involves remote controls, “but we didn't give a lot of airtime” to it on Wednesday's call, he said. “I do see that going to production” in 2021, he said. “When combined, we are now confident that these voice-enabled solutions, which are scheduled to come to market later this year, will materialize into revenue for us in the second half of fiscal 2021.” Now that QuickLogic is “finally able to say that we're Amazon-certified,” it’s going to move along “some of these hearable opportunities that we've already been cultivating for some time,” he said.

Global smart speaker shipments rose 58% last year to 154 million, with revenue of $11.3 billion, reported Omdia Wednesday. Revenue is forecast to reach $14.7 billion in 2021. Some 18.8% of smart speakers shipped last year had a display, up from 11.5% in 2019, spurred by a rise in video chatting during the pandemic, said the research firm. North America shipments grew by 71% year on year to 72.9 million devices, the highest growth in the category since 2017.

Ricoh’s IM series of multifunction printers can be controlled by voice using Alexa for Business, said the company Tuesday. Voice control can be used to execute simple voice commands for changing document settings such as quantity, color and duplex printing, it said. The technology is configurable with Ricoh's enhanced screen readers that help users who have trouble seeing the device screen, allowing them to give verbal commands.