Apple pushes back Siri's major overhaul from March iOS 26.4 to later release due to persistent testing problems including slow response times, accuracy issues, and bugs that cause the assistant to default to ChatGPT over Apple's own technology.
Newo secures $25 million Series A funding led by Veeam founder to expand its AI voice infrastructure serving over 15,000 AI receptionists across small businesses, with the platform handling calls, SMS, and web chat using specialized Zero-Hallucination Architecture for subsecond response times.
Mistral AI unveils Voxtral Transcribe 2, a breakthrough speech-to-text system delivering lightning-fast 480ms latency across 13 languages with on-device privacy capabilities, outperforming OpenAI and Gemini while offering open-source accessibility for enterprise applications in healthcare, finance, and customer service.
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ nationwide with advanced AI capabilities including complex conversations, task automation, and restaurant bookings, offering free access to Prime members while charging non-Prime users $19.99 monthly for unlimited features.
AI voice company ElevenLabs raises $500 million in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital, reaching an $11 billion valuation that triples its worth from just one year ago, as the company reports over $330 million in annual recurring revenue from major enterprise clients including Deutsche Telekom and Square.
Amazon rolls out Alexa+ nationwide with advanced generative AI capabilities that enable natural conversations and complex task completion, offering free access to Prime members while charging non-Prime users $19.99 monthly after beta testing showed users engaged 2-3 times more than with original Alexa.
Apple acquires Israeli AI startup Q.ai for nearly $2 billion in its second-largest deal ever, gaining revolutionary technology that reads facial expressions and micro-movements to enable silent speech communication with Siri through future headphones and glasses.
Apple acquires Israeli AI startup Q.ai for $2 billion to boost Siri with silent speech technology, but simultaneously loses four key AI researchers to Meta and Google while CEO Tim Cook remains optimistic despite the company's delayed AI market entry.
OpenAI releases Whisper, a powerful speech recognition AI that understands multiple languages and offers six different model sizes from 39M to 809M parameters, using advanced Transformer technology to handle speech recognition, translation, and language identification in one unified system.
Apple acquires Israeli AI startup Q.ai in an undisclosed deal to strengthen its audio technology capabilities, marking the second acquisition from CEO Aviad Maizels who previously sold PrimeSense to Apple for Face ID development, as the tech giant intensifies its AI strategy amid growing competitive pressure from rivals.