February 2023 Summaries

Ubisoft has partnered with Speechmatics, a leading speech-to-text API scaleup, to provide improved accessibility for its popular free-to-play game 'Brawlhalla'. The new feature, live captioning, enables viewers to watch streams with real-time closed captions, making the experience more inclusive. This collaboration addresses a significant demand in the market and demonstrates the value of accessibility in the gaming industry. Speechmatics' custom dictionary feature allows for instant updates to improve accuracy, while the technology's potential to be rolled out globally is being explored. The partnership aims to make gaming and streaming as inclusive as possible, with Ubisoft having an outstanding track record on accessibility.

We are pleased to announce our involvement in the NVIDIA Inception program, a free program designed to help startups evolve faster through access to cutting-edge technology and NVIDIA experts, connections with venture capitalists, and co-marketing support. The program boasts one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world, with thousands of members across various industries, including AI-focused companies like Plus and Greeneye, which have leveraged the platform's resources to drive innovation. At Speechmatics, our aim is to exploit ever-larger amounts of compute to train leading Autonomous Speech Recognition systems, and we see NVIDIA Inception as a critical partner in this journey. With access to technical workshops, developer forums, optimal hardware pricing, investor opportunities, and speaking opportunities at events, we are excited about the prospect of growth and innovation with NVIDIA's support. Our goal is to continue pushing forward to understand every voice, improving accuracy, and increasing language support, and we believe the Inception program will help us achieve this.

When innovating with Speech APIs, product leaders need to think about delivering a great user experience by leveraging accurate transcript and metadata, targeting the widest possible market by considering inclusive geographical reach, supporting different sectors and custom vocabulary, and managing cost of delivery through estimating Total Cost of Ownership. This involves making complex trade-off decisions and finding the sweet spot for differentiation while working with technology partners who match your pace of innovation.