Sonos could be making its own Alexa-style voice assistant. It recently sent out a customer survey to gauge responses to the function, which would work slightly differently to most voice assistants by being completely on-device, and not routing requests through the cloud.
Its purpose? To let you control a speaker's main functions like play/pause, search songs, and play music through other speakers on the same wi-fi network, all by speaking.
The customer survey was posted by a user on Reddit, and was picked up by VoiceBot.AI (via The Verge).
According to the survey, the voice assistant would use the wake word "Hey Sonos" (just like Apple's "Hey Siri" or Google's "Hey Google"). It also claims that the on-device processing would mean quicker response times than sending the requests off the cloud to be processed. It's described as a "potential new product offering".
Sonos wouldn't comment on the survey, only saying that it regularly suggests product and experience concepts to customers to gauge feedback.
Sonos bought Snips, an AI-powered voice control platform in 2019. This survey suggests it's putting its investment to use. It's also taking Google – one of its voice assistant partners – to court, claiming that its Google Chromecast and Home speaker devices infringed on some of Sonos' patents. Given these developments, making its own voice assistant would be a logical move.
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