Two years after it was announced that voice chat would be coming to Roblox, the gaming company has acquired a voice technology startup, Speechly, which offers voice chat moderation, real-time transcription, and a Voice API that allows companies to add AI voice technology and voice interfaces to their products. and experiences.
Helsinki, Finland-based startup Speechly was founded in 2016 with the mission to enable better computer voice interactions and communications between people online, resulting in the creation of its real-time voice moderation technology that helps reduce toxic behavior in online communities. According to our own research, almost 70% of gamers have used voice chat at least once. But of those, 72% said they had experienced a toxic incident.
Roblox, meanwhile, is expanding into voice chat-based interactions, initially by allowing developers to add voice to their games and other experiences. Instead of speech bubbles appearing above the avatar’s heads, players would be able to talk to each other naturally in real time. More recently, the company announced avatar-based voice calling with facial motion tracking, which will allow Roblox users to connect in a 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 for users 17 and older.
Speechly will assist Roblox in this and other efforts by offering AI moderation tools that can handle real-time voice communications.
“Roblox is building the leading platform for immersive 3D communications and connection. Every day, 65.5 million daily active users of all ages come to Roblox to socialize, experience, and create memories with friends. With the addition of new speech features, including voice chat, Roblox solves new challenges: moderating spoken language in real time,” Hannes Heikinheimo, co-founder and CTO of Speechly, wrote in a blog post.
“Security and civility are fundamental to Roblox. We are excited to join a company committed to safety and civility and to use our AI expertise to develop traditional moderation methods to meet the scale, real-time and dynamic needs of a user-generated content platform (UGC),” he added.
Speechly is a Y Combinator-backed company with investors including Seedcamp, SNÖ Ventures, TQ Ventures, Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, Quantum Angels, Joyance Partners, Social Starts, Tiny.vc, Juha Paananen and Nicolas Dessaigne. The startup raised a seed round of €2 million in 2019. Prior to the acquisition, the company received SOC 2 Type II certification, which ensures that customer data is treated securely, with integrity and confidentially while respecting customer privacy. This probably made it an even more attractive acquisition target.
The news was announced on Speechly’s blog and first reported by Voicebot.ai, which noted that Speechly is more advanced than some rivals such as Modulate’s ToxMode and Spectrum Labs.
Terms of the deal with Roblox were not disclosed.
More to come.