Two years after announcing that Roblox would be introducing voice chat, the gaming company has acquired a voice technology startup. colloquiallyvoice chat moderation, real-time transcription, and voice APIs that allow businesses to add AI voice technology and voice interfaces to their products and experiences.
Speechly, a startup based in Helsinki, Finland, was founded in 2016 with a mission to enable better computer voice interaction and communication between people online, and as a result, reduce harmful behavior in online communities. Real-time voice moderation technology has been developed to help reduce According to our own research, about 70% of gamers have used voice chat at least once. However, 72% of them said they had experienced an adverse incident.
Roblox, on the other hand, has been expanding voice chat-based interactions, initially by allowing developers to add voice to games and other experiences. Instead of text bubbles appearing above the avatar’s head, players will be able to naturally converse with each other in real time. Recently, the company announced avatar-based voice calling with facial movement tracking. This will allow Roblox users to connect to the virtual space and chat live. The latter is part of Roblox’s broader efforts to cater to its aging user base by offering content and experiences to users 17 and older.
Speechly helps Roblox with these and other efforts by providing AI moderation tools that can handle real-time voice communications.
“Roblox is building the leading platform for 3D immersive communication and connectivity. Every day, 65.5 million active users of all ages come to Roblox to spend time with friends, have experiences, and make memories. “With the addition of new audio features like voice chat, Roblox is solving new challenges in moderating spoken language in real time,” Speechly co-founder and CTO Hannes Heikinheimo wrote in a blog post. Masu. post.
“Safety and civility are the cornerstones of Roblox. We are excited to join a company that specializes in safety and civility, and to leverage our AI expertise to evolve traditional moderation methods and improve our user experience. We are excited to be able to meet the scale, real-time, and dynamic needs of a generated content (UGC) platform.”
Speechly is a Y Combinator-backed company whose investors include Seedcamp, SNÖ Ventures, TQ Ventures, Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, Quantum Angels, Joyance Partners, Social Starts, Tiny.vc, Juha Paananen, and Nicolas Dessaigne. The company raised his $7.53 million in outside capital, according to Pitchbook.
The startup raised a seed round of 2 million euros in 2019.Prior to the acquisition, the company Obtained SOC 2 Type II certification, ensures that customer data is treated with security, integrity and confidentiality, while respecting customer privacy. This likely made the company an even more attractive acquisition target.
The news was announced on Speechly’s blog and was first reported by voicebot.ainoted that Speechly is more sophisticated than some rivals like Modulate’s ToxMode and Spectrum Labs.
Terms of the agreement with Roblox were not disclosed. Roblox did not provide any other details about the acquisition when contacted for comment.
Roblox declined to comment, updated on September 20th at 2:12pm ET.
