SoundHound Inc.’s Houndify Voice AI Platform Powers Snapchat’s New Voice Scan Feature

Powered by Houndify, Snapchatters can use natural spoken language to discover just the right Lens to enhance their faces and surroundings

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SoundHound Inc.^Ⓡ, the leading innovator in voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies, today announced a partnership to bring voice capabilities to Snapchat’s Scan platform. Using Snapchat’s dynamic camera, Scan helps people learn more about what they’re seeing around them. With Snapchat’s new Voice Scan feature, powered by SoundHound Inc.’s voice AI platform, Houndify^TM, Snapchatters can quickly find the right Lens to augment their faces or the world around them just by asking.

“We are thrilled to be one of Snapchat’s first Scan platform partners and voice-enable one of their most powerful features,” said James Hom, Co-Founder & Vice President, Products at SoundHound Inc. “With hundreds of thousands of Lenses available in the app, being able to just ask for a feature offers a powerful new way to discover new Lenses with the added convenience of being hands-free.”

To access the new Voice Scan feature within the Lens carousel, users start by saying “Hey Snapchat” followed by a verbal request.

Front-facing examples:

• "Make my hair pink"
• "Give me green eyes"
• "Give me a hug"

World-facing examples:

• "Take me underwater"
• "Take me to the jungle"
• "Take me to outer space"

In addition to leveraging Houndify’s fast and accurate voice recognition capabilities, the Snapchat app uses Houndify’s Wake Word technology, allowing voice interactions to be triggered hands-free just by saying, “Hey Snapchat.”

SoundHound Inc.’s partnership extends back to June 2018 when their music discovery app became a launch partner for Snap Kit, Snapchat’s third-party integration platform for iOS and Android. Within the SoundHound app, users with Snapchat can create a customizable music Snap containing song details, an exclusive animation, innovative effects, and a playback link.

Houndify’s capabilities represent more than a decade of R&D and innovation by SoundHound Inc., resulting in unique advantages, making it the smartest and most accurate voice AI platform in the market. Houndify’s patented Speech-to-Meaning^Ⓡ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies deliver unprecedented speed and accuracy in voice recognition and responses, and the ability to understand context, such as the user's location or previous queries—supporting more natural interactions.

Developers interested in exploring Houndify’s independent voice AI platform can visit Houndify.com to learn more and register for a free account.

To learn more about Snapchat’s new Voice Snap feature powered by Houndify, visit SoundHound Inc.’s Speech-to-Meaning blog.

About SoundHound Inc.:

SoundHound Inc. turns sound into understanding and actionable meaning. We believe in enabling humans to interact with the things around them in the same way we interact with each other: by speaking naturally to mobile phones, cars, apps, TVs, smart speakers, and every other part of the emerging ‘connected’ world. Our consumer app, Hound, leverages our Speech-to-Meaning^Ⓡ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies to create a groundbreaking smartphone experience, and is the first product to build on the Houndify platform. Our SoundHound App applies our technology to music, enabling people to discover, explore, and share the music around them, and even find the name of that song stuck in their heads by singing or humming. Through the Houndify platform, we aim to bring voice-enabled AI to everyone and enable others to build on top of it. We call this Collective AI. Our Mission: Houndify everything.