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Mycroft – open source voice assistant

mycroft.ai

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Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#111

Post by tjohns »

Brendinooo wrote: post #33
rexreed wrote: post #26

The voice assistant space is dying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Some of the comments below are part of the explanation why. It doesn't work as well as people were hoping, and it's a solution in search of a problem with limited application and it seems little monetization. The above article sums it up better from the big tech company's perspective.

The "voice assistant space" also includes Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana, so it's not going anywhere. I'd contend that it's absolutely not a solution in search of a problem; it's much more of an unsolved problem, and a big part of the "why" is - voice recognition/assistance tech still maturing - major players are insisting that the tech supports their walled gardens - price points are still a problem The last tw…

> 1. If you can make voice assistant software open-source and plug-and-play, then it frees people up to tinker with form factors

For what it's worth, Google Assistant does have an open API to create new devices. It's not open source, but you can certainly experiment with your own custom form factors. There's even a tutorial:

https://medium.com/google-cloud/how-to-build-your-own-smart-...

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#112

Post by ElijahLynn »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #98
Brendinooo wrote: post #13

I backed on IndieGoGo (in late 2018 I think), then helped crowdfund on StartEngine. I want so badly to speak well of these guys, and since I invested I want them to succeed, but it's been getting harder to do so. They deserve credit for being reasonably transparent about their processes though. Their blog has been very interesting to follow. They had a ton of issues trying to work out their original design, then the…

Those prices are really insane tbh. No way it will take off like that, it's just a non-starter. 200 was already the upper limit of what's doable. I think they're stretching too much to satisfy the original backers and it's commendable not giving up on them but if it's going to be similar to Alexa, Siri or Google it's just not good enough. If it were an actual assistant I could talk to, then yes. It would be worth it.…

I'm not sure that price is going to be a blocker. The audience may not think of price as the main thing here, they may think of openness and non-vendor lockin and privacy and security as pretty amazing things for that price.

I myself am getting tired AF of Google Assistant and their devices. So so tired of saying "Hey Google". And I have a Lenovo device with Google on it that was decent, the Google pushed an update to it and all video calls have an echo on them now making it entirely unusable. There are multiple threads on the internet about it too and Lenovo support says "contact Google" and Google says nothing on those threads, zilch. I don't trust Google devices anymore, they get abandoned routinely. I wish they didn't but I feel more empowered with an open device than I do with closed source, no public response Google stuff.

I'm definitely curious about trying a Mycroft now, and I think there may be others too. It may not be the masses but it might be enough to keep the project thriving.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#113

Post by patrick451 »

EntropyIsAHoax wrote: post #30
vagrantJin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been looking for an open source tool like this for a while now - but to automate some home security stuff. All I need is good basic functionality anyways. So its good to know it at least works. The sexism part is horse manure though. A strong accusation on a likely small team on tight deadlines and budgets who cannot cater to everyone all at once, like Big Tech and their massive resources and teams.

I don't mean to say the devs have any ill intent. Just pointing out the reality it has trouble with feminine voices. Like veidr points out in response to my comments, implicit bias is a big issue. Probably they originally trained the wakeword model entirely on American cis men, so naturally it has trouble recognizing any voice outside of that norm. It's not an accusation, this is a very well documented pitfall of mac…

This hardly sounds like sexism.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#114

Post by synesthesiam »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #64
acidburnNSA wrote: post #52

I installed their self-hosted minic3 tts the other day to add a voice to my home assistant on prem smart home. It sounds unbelievably good compared to the picotts crap I was using before. Pretty stoked. Now I want to try getting the voice assistant hooked up too. https://mycroft.ai/mimic-3/

Sadly their German voices sound broken, as if they stress and lengthen/shorten random syllables. And that's with their demo text.

Sorry about that. I'm going to be working more closely with native German speakers to get it right!

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#115

Post by bombcar »

zamadatix wrote: post #100
smoldesu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all the easily monetizable tasks I can do instead" This is a word-for-word description of how Siri originally functioned. "You asked for the top 5 romantic resturaunts nearby; here are the top results from Google Search:"

GP isn't talking about bad fallback answers where it punts you to a search page more like when you ask "Hey Alexa, what is the time" and it says "The time is 5:45 PM. By the way did you know you can buy ribbons for the holidays on Amazon by saying..." i.e. things that are blatantly unrelated to answering your question and often trying to sell you something.

It’s annoying because I kind of understand advertising the capabilities- but for Siri for example I cannot find a documented list of all the commands it can “understand” and so I can’t learn how best to use it. I just have to guess and hope I get close enough.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#116

Post by kuberlog »

horsawlarway wrote: post #49
rolenthedeep wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to squeeze money out of you are dying. Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. It is, however, very, very bad for Amazon and Google, because those tasks don't make them money. That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute sp…

Yup - I think this is the truth. I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars right this second for a simple voice assistant for things like weather, time, timers, unit conversion, alarms, and home assistant control (mainly lights). I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no chance to evaluate it yet. I'm very interested in devices that can do this locally. I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymo…

I worked on a project in 2016 that told me all I needed to know about the space. It was an online voice assistant and I couldn't find myself wanting to interact with it. Even though I spent a lot of time on the project, I scrapped it, because it was just lame. It looked kind of cool, but was lame.

I personally don't think there is enough cybernetica to control with voice. At some point there may be, but right now, the internet is just one giant consumption stream with a few searches and purchases now and then.

That digital daemon experience taught me that I care more about physical intelligence than verbal intelligence when it comes to my technology. I'm verbally intelligent myself, I don't need an AI who can't even speak correctly, let alone understand me, be my verbal interface to the world.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#117

Post by shagie »

one-another-dev wrote: post #102
shagie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pi isn't really fast enough to process the speech in real time. If you've got an iPhone... put it in to airplane mode so that it is local only. You'll note that Siri no longer works when you do this. However... open up the notes app and tap the microphone. Do some interesting text... > Mister Smith said that he wanted a two by four and half of a pie. (if you don't have an iDevice, it transcribes this as: > Mr.…

> If you've got an iPhone... put it in to airplane mode so that it is local only. You'll note that Siri no longer works when you do this This is not true anymore. Latest iPhone models have offline Siri working to some extent

Fair 'nuff... though I was after a "even with an older model iPhone, and no net connection, there the ability to do speech to text (and even with some interesting transformations of "two by four"), it can be done locally."

What's more... consider https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz...

> In order to provide an additional layer of privacy for our users, we proxy all STT requests through Mycroft's servers. This prevents Google's service from profiling Mycroft users or connecting voice recordings to their identities.

If Mycoft goes offline or doesn't pay their STT bill ( https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text ), the device loses a bit of its functionality.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#118

Post by bombcar »

nottorp wrote: post #109
smoldesu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only tells me which one will exist longer, not that "Apple's plan works". I've genuinely seen zero people deliberately use Siri (on iPhone or Mac) over the past 5 years. Apple is certainly losing money on Siri too.

I was one of those zero people until i realized i can tell Siri "add an appointment with Blahblah next tuesday at 11", it will actually understand that and it takes less time than using the calendar interface. I'm sure enough people find some small use for the voice commands that it's a good feature to have on the phones.

Siri really shines with the HomePod or the watch I’ve found.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#119

Post by vineyardmike »

shagie wrote: post #84
rolenthedeep wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to squeeze money out of you are dying. Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. It is, however, very, very bad for Amazon and Google, because those tasks don't make them money. That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute sp…

> Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. I'll certainly grant that... but the price point where Mycroft is, is certainly not near what I'd pay for doing those few simple tasks. Apple is at the upper end of what I'd spend for such a device (the HomePod mini is $99) - and that's because I'm fairly invested into the Apple ecosystem and…

> The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa, stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable) are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the functionality that I use it for.

So cold comfort since it’s annoying as hell, but it slowly learns you don’t like it and will back off its frequency. Amazon unsurprisingly tracks “dissatisfaction” responses and adapts rate of things (globally and individually) so you do actually have to cuss out Alexa to change it. It’s slow because obviously it’s profitable but it does happen.

Re: Mycroft – open source voice assistant

#120

Post by vineyardmike »

jm4 wrote: post #53
rexreed wrote: post #26

The voice assistant space is dying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Some of the comments below are part of the explanation why. It doesn't work as well as people were hoping, and it's a solution in search of a problem with limited application and it seems little monetization. The above article sums it up better from the big tech company's perspective.

I don't think the entire space is dying. Amazon is having problems because Alexa has little benefit to them outside of direct monetization. They wanted people to use Alexa to buy things and no one wants to shop like that. So they have these devices and all this infrastructure to run people's kitchen timers, lights and play music. People will buy Alexa devices on Prime Day, use them dozens of times a day for years, an…

> Apple isn't necessarily in the same boat.

Also importantly, Siri mostly runs off your iPhones processor, and apple doesn’t have to pay a big cloud bill for it, unlike Alexa.

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