It’s well-known that Intel is keen for the next swathe of ultrabooks to feature touchscreens. But it also has another wish for the future of svelte computing: it’s teaming up with Nuance to outfit upcoming ultrabooks with voice-recognition technology.
Pocket-lint reports that Intel has announced that a new voice assistant, called Nuance Dragon Assistant Beta, will feature in future iterations of ultrabooks. Peter Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer at Nuance, explained:
“Dragon Assistant is a direct result of Nuance and Intel’s vision for a more human, natural interaction between people and their technology. You speak and the Ultrabook responds. Working closely with Intel, we’ve created a voice assistant experience optimised for the Ultrabook — incredibly fast, reliable, and with the performance you expect from a combined Nuance-Intel innovation.”
Or, in other words, this is Intel and Nuance trying desperately to keep up with Apple and Google. Like Apple’s offerings, the Nuance software will let users search, launch software and dictate text without touching their keyboard, though it remains to be seen exactly how good it will be.
Intel has confirmed that the Dell XPS13 will be among the first PCs to ship with the new software, and it should land before the Christmas holidays this year. [Pocket-lint]