With the uproar this week over Siri’s seemingly homophobic responses to Russian queries about gays (Question: “Are there any gay bars around me?”; Answer: “You are so rude!”) and Apple’s refusal to comment about them, we decided to take a look at one of the more compelling areas of fintech: voice-assisted banking.
Besides stating the obvious — that voice-assisted computing is somewhat fraught with potential programs — creating reliable, effective voice-assisted banking is anything but easy. There are at least four companies playing in the VAB space: Nuance Technologies, Ask Ziggy, Interactions, and Kasisto. Recently spun off from SRI International, the same organization that sold Siri technology to Apple in 2010, Kasisto plans two commercial product releases this year.
What follows are demos of each the players in VAB. As far as we know, no knowledge of Russian is required.