Dear friends,
Voice-based AI that you can talk to is improving rapidly, yet most people still don’t appreciate how pervasive voice UIs (user interfaces) will become. Today, we use a keyboard and mouse to control most desktop and web applications. In the future, I hope we will be able additionally to talk to many of these applications to steer them. I’m particularly excited about the work of Vocal Bridge (an AI Fund portfolio company), where CEO Ashwyn Sharma is leading the way to provide developer tools that enable this.
Every significant UI change has spawned many new applications as well as allowed us to upgrade existing ones. The mouse made point-and-click possible. Touch and swipe gestures enabled new classes of mobile apps. Until recently, voice UIs suffered from high error rates and/or latency, but as they become more reliable, they will open up many new applications.
For instance, I had built a simple math-quiz application for my daughter. She has enjoyed using the keyboard to play this game (which shows a cute cat graphic on right answers because she loves cats! 🐱). Adding a voice UI, so it quizzes her verbally in a friendly way and she can respond verbally, removes friction and changes how the experience feels.
