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In a conversation with the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s new voice assistant ‘Beeb’ (a working title), Jeremy Walker, one of the team building it, explains a bit more about what it is and why the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s doing it.

Jeremy:

Ok Beeb, I’ve got to go to Cardiff for work, can you help set me up with some podcasts and a playlist for the train?

Beeb:

Absolutely, we’ve got the Brexitcast episode you wanted to listen to a couple of weeks ago, the rest of “Test Match Special at the Ashes” you were listening to and there’s a new “Power Down” playlist from Annie Mac if that’s interesting?

What’s happening in Cardiff?

Jeremy:

Playlist sounds good, let’s stick with that lot.

The trip to Cardiff is to kick off the next phase of the product development work we’re doing around the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s voice experiences. We’re finally getting close to a place where people will be able to talk directly to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ and we’ll be able to understand what they’re saying.

Beeb:

Ok, but why would you want to do that? Doesn’t the Â鶹ԼÅÄ just make TV programmes and stuff?

Jeremy:

Of course it does, but it also does so much more. It also makes world-leading radio programmes.

It creates and curates live events, music festivals, and major films. It also makes all of that online content. As well as fascinating, programming around issues and topics ranging from The Blues to Blue Planet, from top Grime acts to Top Gear. Not to mention up to the minute news and weather right around the world. And Killing Eve and Strictly and, and, and… 

That’s a hell of a lot of stuff to work your way through. And if you’re a licence fee payer you should get the best out of the full breadth of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ right? I know I struggle to keep up. We want to help everyone get the most they can out of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ.

That means giving them a little assistance. It means giving them a voice assistant.

Beeb:

Wait, that does sound interesting. So the Â鶹ԼÅÄ is building its own voice assistant?

Jeremy:

Ah, yeah.  How else would I be talking to you?

Beeb:

But I don’t get it, how would this voice assistant work? How different is that from talking to Alexa now? I can already ask Alexa to play Â鶹ԼÅÄ programmes and I can stream Â鶹ԼÅÄ radio on Google Assistant.

Jeremy:

That’s right, over the last two years the team have built out experiences on Amazon’s Alexa and Google, and they’re really good. They’ve even won a bunch of awards for their children’s experiences.

The Â鶹ԼÅÄ has a long history of tech innovation in the UK, but in this area we’re at the behest of huge US-based tech companies.  We pioneered TV in the UK, as the world started to embrace it.  At the advent of the Internet, we made sure there was a trustworthy, quality website where the public could access news.  And now – as a fifth of UK adults have voice-enabled smart speakers and it becomes the next technology that could change how people find and consume content – we are innovating in this space, too

We also know that people who use voice assistants are concerned with how their data is being used – especially around things like targeted advertising. 

By building a Â鶹ԼÅÄ assistant, we can build an assistant that is trusted and puts audiences at its very heart.  It will serve up what people want to watch or listen to - from across the Â鶹ԼÅÄ - from iPlayer to Sounds, News to Sport –  on smart-speakers, our website, apps and TVs - and free of commercial interests. It will allow us to have the creative freedom to experiment and try out new ways of connecting with people through conversation. We move quickly in rather than needing someone else’s permission to build in a certain way. It’ll allow us to be much more ambitious and more experimental in the content that teams can create and the ways in which we help people to find the best bits of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ for them.

Beeb:

So where would I find it? Is there a new device people will need to get?

Jeremy:

No, we’re not creating any devices of our own..

Right now the focus is on building it and piecing together the first experiences while we figure out the best ways to provide it to people. We’ll know more on that soon. It’s being built to work on any voice assisted device (smart-speaker, mobile, TV or anything else) so ultimately we’d like to make it as widely available as possible. However, we would need the device manufacturers to let people have access to it.

Beeb:

Ok, sounds like you have a lot to do… when is this thing meant to be ready?

Jeremy:

Yeah, there’s a lot to do – but we’re aiming to make a first version available next year. It won’t be the finished product – we’ll constantly improve it.

Beeb:

It does sound pretty exciting but it also doesn’t sound like what people think the Â鶹ԼÅÄ does?

Jeremy:

Yeah, it’s funny that. Because this is exactly what the Â鶹ԼÅÄ does. The Â鶹ԼÅÄ helps all of us better engage with the world around us. It helps to inform, educate and entertain each of us. And it’s always done this by pushing hard to pioneer new ways of doing those things. At the beginning the best way to do that was to produce the nation’s only reliable radio content, then TV. Then Â鶹ԼÅÄ News Online. Then the Â鶹ԼÅÄ led the way in on-demand video with iPlayer and Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds is starting to reinvent what we do for music, radio and podcast fans in the UK.

Earlier this year we reached a point where 21% of UK adults claim to have a smart speaker in their home. That’s one in five people with a voice assistant in their house. And I’d wager near enough 99% have one in their pocket on their phone…

We are entering into an assistant enabled age.

Whenever there have been marked shifts in the way that we consume content or understand the world around us, the Â鶹ԼÅÄ has been at the forefront of figuring out what those shifts mean for public service values and for how we should enable everyone, not just the ‘techys’ to explore their world in new ways.

That’s what the Â鶹ԼÅÄ does and that’s what we’re doing by building a Â鶹ԼÅÄ assistant.

Beeb:

Alright, alright, but you never answered my question though, why are you going to Cardiff? The teams are in Salford, Glasgow and London but not Cardiff?

Jeremy:

Oh right, sorry. I’m going to Cardiff to help with the audio collection.

For this thing to work for everyone the assistant will have to recognise everyone’s accent to accurately understand what each of us is saying. So a few of us are off to help gather different audio samples from different parts of the country and from people with different accents all over the UK. We’ll start in Â鶹ԼÅÄ offices and then build a basic model that way. Assuming that works, we’ll continue to refine it.

Beeb:

So what’s this assistant thing going to be called then?

Jeremy:

Urm…isn’t your name a potential giveaway?

Beeb:

Ok…Beeb.