TiVo Will Make Streaming Content Recommendations Based on User's Voice

By Mara Anton

Posted on January 27, 2021

TiVo has taken the next step in offering personalized recommendations to its users. Soon, the platform will be able to distinguish between users from the same household and deliver smart (and different) recommendations to each of them.

To do so, Tivo has partnered up with Pindrop, a pioneer in fraud detection and voice authentication. The idea is to use voice AI to recognize one user from the other, and one voice command from another.

For example, if one user asks, “What should I watch?”, the TiVo service will come up with personalized content they are most likely to want to watch.

If another member of the household will ask the exact same thing next time, they’ll get completely different results – no profile switching required.

”Contextual awareness is key when engaging users through a Natural User Interface. Beyond just understanding what was said, we want to understand the context of the situation to drive intelligent system behavior in the moment,” said Jon Heim, Senior Director of Product & Conversation Services at TiVo.

“The ability to distinguish between different members of a household based on their voice is an example of this contextual awareness, enabling us to provide an unprecedented level of personalization through an experience tailored to that specific person.”

If you’re thinking about the toll this will take on your privacy, put those worries to rest. User opt-in is required, and while Pindrop’s solution is able to distinguish between different speakers, the technology doesn’t know nor need to know the identity of who is speaking.

Pindrop’s technology analyzes more than 250 specific biological and behavioral voice characteristics, like the frequency and harmonics of speech as well as the patterns of intonation, rhythm, style, and even tone and emotions.

Additionally, background noises or changes in a speaker’s voice caused by sickness, aging or even mask-wearing has a negligible impact on Pindrop’s Voice Authentication accuracy.

So when should we expect these changes to our TiVo experience?