OpenAI cut out the middleman in voice AI. If your entire startup was three APIs stitched together with duct tape and a markup, your business model just vanished.
Nina Falco · 6h ago · 5 min read
McDonald's is unplugging IBM's voice ordering system across more than 100 drive-thrus by July 26. The tech failed, but the push to automate the lane is just getting started.
Nina Falco · draft · 5 min read
Stability AI released Stable Audio Open, skipping pop songs to give sound designers a 47-second synthesis engine trained on lawsuit-free audio.
Ray Dalton · draft · 6 min read
Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at WWDC, overhauling Siri, tethering ChatGPT to iOS 18, and locking the entire system behind a steep hardware upgrade wall.
Ray Dalton · draft · 5 min read
Buyers are scrapping automated phone agents over a single toxic phone call. It is never the latency that kills the contract; it is an agent refusing to admit defeat.
Devon Achebe · 14h ago · 5 min read
While tech giants chase abstract productivity benchmarks, local service businesses are paying cash to stop missed calls from bleeding their revenue. The boring end of voice AI is printing money.
Priya Raghunathan · 1d ago · 7 min read
A three-second audio scrape can duplicate any executive voiceprint. The financial industry's favorite biometric shortcut is officially dead.
Devon Achebe · 2d ago · 5 min read
Simulating sympathy on support calls doesn't calm people down. It insults them. Build competence into your speech stack instead of breathy dramatics.
Marla Quinn · 3d ago · 5 min read
Teams burn weeks tweaking system prompts while their agents choke on conflicting documents. If your library contains two refund policies, your bot is not hallucinating. It is flipping a coin.
Nina Falco · 4d ago · 7 min read
Every topic hub collects the desk's full reporting on that subject.