The BBC announced last year that it was working on a voice assistant called “Beeb.” Today, developers moved the software to the beta phase. The testing will be semi-open to the public. Windows Insiders in the UK can download Beeb from the Microsoft store for use on Windows 10 only the UK broadcaster announced today.
Google and Amazon dominate the digital assistant market, and there does not seem to be a lot of room or need for a third competitor (or fourth, fifth, or sixth, depending on how you count). It is hard to see Beeb grabbing much attention unless it can offer something completely different or works in a closed ecosystem like Siri or Bixby.
The BBC seems to be toying with the latter idea. Back in August, it said that it was not looking to add a full range of features that users can currently see in full-fledged voice assistants like Alexa. Instead, the broadcaster is looking to provide voice functionality to its website and other voice-activated products.
Privacy is a key concern with any voice assistant. BBC News reports that Beeb won’t keep any voice recordings, only anonimised transcripts. Over the past year, other major voice assistant providers have been hit by scandals as it’s emerged that their employees and contractors have been able to listen to voice recordings from the services.
Beeb has been designed to be more representative of the UK’s plethora of regional accents. As you can hear in the video embedded above, Beeb speaks with a northern English accent, and the BBC says it’s focused on making sure the assistant can understand regional accents from across the country. BBC News notes that beta testers will be asked to provide details of their accent to help further train the assistant.
Although its functionality is limited at launch, we’ve written before that more competition in the voice assistant space is no bad thing. Alexa and Google Assistant will never be able to do everything, so it could be better to have multiple specialized voice assistants working together to respond to voice queries.
