Year: 2018

B2B e-commerce company Sokowatch closed a $2 million seed investment led by 4DX Ventures. Others to join the round were Village Global, Lynett Capital, Golden Palm Investments, and Outlierz  Ventures.

The Kenya based company aims to shake up the supply chain market for Africa’s informal retailers.

Sokowatch’s platform connects Africa’s informal retail stores directly to local and multi-national suppliers—such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble—by digitizing orders, delivery, and payments with the aim of reducing costs and increasing profit margins.

“With both manufacturers and the small shops, we’re becoming the connective layer between them, where previously you had multiple layers of middle-men from distributors, sub-distributors, to wholesalers,” Sokowatch founder and CEO Daniel Yu told TechCrunch.

“The cost of sourcing goods right now…we estimate we’re cutting that cost by about 20 percent [for] these shopkeepers,” he said

“There are millions of informal stores across Africa’s cities selling hundreds of billions worth of consumer goods every year,” said Yu.

These stores can use Sokowatch’s app on mobile phones to buy wares directly from large suppliers, arrange for transport, and make payments online. “Ordering on SMS or Android gets you free delivery of products to your store, on average, in about two hours,” said Yu.

Sokowatch generates revenues by earning “a margin on the goods that we’re selling to shopkeepers,” said Yu. On the supplier side, they also benefit from “aggregating demand…and getting bulk deals on the products that we distribute.”

The company recently launched a line of credit product to extend working capital loans to platform clients. With the $2 million round, Sokowatch—which currently operates in Kenya and Tanzania—plans to “expand to new markets in East Africa, as well as pilot additional value add services to the shops,” said Yu.

MallforAfrica and DHL launched MarketPlaceAfrica.com: a global e-commerce site for select African artisans to sell wares to buyers in any of DHL’s 220 delivery countries.

The site will prioritize fashion items — clothing, bags, jewelry, footwear and personal care — and crafts, such as pictures and carvings. MallforAfrica is vetting sellers for MarketPlace Africa online and through the Africa Made Product Standards association (AMPS), to verify made-in-Africa status and merchandise quality.

“We’re starting off in Nigeria and then we’ll open in Kenya, Rwanda and the rest of Africa, utilizing DHL’s massive network,” MallforAfrica CEO Chris Folayan told TechCrunch about where the goods will be sourced. “People all around the world can buy from African artisans online, that’s the goal,” Folayan told TechCrunch.

Current listed designer products include handbags from Chinwe Ezenwa and Tash women’s outfits by Tasha Goodwin.

In addition to DHL for shipping, MarketPlace Africa will utilize MallforAfrica’s e-commerce infrastructure. The startup was founded in 2011 to solve challenges global consumer goods companies face when entering Africa.

French President Emmanuel Macron  href="https://pctechmag.com/2018/05/french-president-emmanuel-macron-launches-a-usd76m-africa-startup-fund/">unveiled a $76 million African startup fund at VivaTech 2018 and TechCrunch paid a visit to the French Development Agency (AFD) — who will administer the new fund — to get details on how it will work.

The $76 million (or €65 million) will divvy up into three parts, AFD Digital Task Team Leader Christine Ha told TechCrunch.

“There are €10 million [$11.7 million] for technical assistance to support the African ecosystem… €5 million will be available as interest-free loans to high-potential, pre-seed startups…and…€50 million [$58 million] will be for equity-based investments in series A to C startups,” explained Ha during a meeting in Paris.

The technical assistance will distribute in the form of grants to accelerators, hubs, incubators and coding programs. The pre-seed startup loans will issue in amounts up to $100,000 “as early, early funding to allow entrepreneurs to prototype, launch and experiment,” said Ha.

The $58 million in VC startup funding will be administered through Proparco, a development finance institution — or DFI — partially owned by the AFD. “Proparco will take equity stakes, and will be a limited partner when investing in VC funds,” said Ha.

Startups from all African countries can apply for a piece of the $58 million by contacting any of Proparco’s Africa offices.

The $11.7 million technical assistance and $5.8 million loan portions of France’s new fund will be available starting in 2019. On implementation, AFD is still “reviewing several options…such as relying on local actors through [France’s] Digital Africa platform,” said Ha. President Macron followed up the Africa fund announcement with a trip to Nigeria last month.

Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 was accepted into Y Combinator’s 2018 class and gained some working capital in the form of $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Western Technology Investment.

The startup — with an Uber like app that connects Nigerian truckers to companies with freight needs — will use the funds to pay drivers online immediately after successful hauls.

Kobo360 is also launching the Kobo Wealth Investment Network, or KoboWIN — a crowd-invest, vehicle financing program. Through it, Kobo drivers can finance new trucks through citizen investors and pay them back directly (with interest) over a 60-month period.

On Kobo360’s utility, “We give drivers the demand and technology to power their businesses,” CEO Obi Ozor told TechCrunch. “An average trucker will make $3,500 a month with our app. That’s middle class territory in Nigeria.”

Kobo360 has served 324 businesses, aggregated a fleet of 5480 drivers and moved 37.6 million kilograms of cargo since 2017, per company stats. Top clients include Honeywell, Olam, Unilever, and DHL.

Ozor thinks the startup’s asset-free, digital platform and business model can outpace traditional long-haul 3PL providers in Nigeria by handling more volume at cheaper prices.

“Logistics in Nigeria have been priced based on the assumption drivers are going to run empty on the way back…When we now match freight with return trips, prices crash.”

Kobo360 will expand in Togo, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal.

[PHOTO: BFX.LAGOS] And finally, applications are open for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Africa, to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, December 11. Early-stage African startups have until September 3 to apply here.

More Africa Related Stories @TechCrunch

More Africa Related Stories @TechCrunch

·         CowryWise micro-savings service opens high-yield government bonds to everyday Nigerians

African Tech Around the Net

·         More Than Half of Sub-Saharan Africa to Be Connected to Mobile by 2025, Finds New GSMA Study
·         Ethiopia’s Gebeya acquires Coders4Africa to accelerate its growth
·         Rwanda, Andela partner to launch pan-African tech hub in Kigali
·         Google’s free public Wi-Fi initiative expanded to Africa
·         Accounteer wins 2018 MEST Entrepreneur challenge
·         SafeBoda completes expansion to Kenya, now live in Nairobi
·         Uganda government sued over social media tax

In a statement released today, Juul Labs has responded to FDA moves to increase regulation on flavored tobacco products in order to curb underage use. This comes at a time when Juul Labs is under increasing scrutiny.

Here’s the statement from Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns:

We fully support FDA’s efforts to curb underage use of tobacco products, and we believe restricting access to flavors will negatively impact current adult smokers in their journey to switch from combustible cigarettes. Appropriate flavors help adult smokers who do not want to be reminded of the tobacco-taste of a cigarette. We encourage FDA to allow for further scientific exploration on the role flavors play in helping adult smokers transition away from combustible cigarettes.

It’s worth noting that, alongside flavors such as Mint, Cucumber, and Mango, Juul also markets a Virginia Tobacco-flavored pod.

This statement follows a proposed ruling by the FDA in March requesting data on the effectiveness of tobacco flavors to help adult smokers smoke less as well as the role they play in initiating non-smoking youth to use tobacco products. In April the FDA requested information from JUUL in particular.

And in May, the FDA and FTC issued 13 letters of warning for e-liquid products that “resemble kid-friendly food products, such as juice boxes, candy or cookies, some of them with cartoon-like imagery,” including e-liquids that resembled Sour Patch Kids, Pocky and Reddi-wip.

A concern to the FDA, as well as parents, is that even if children don’t use these products to start smoking, they can be easily confused with the products they imitate and be harmful if consumed. That’s not to mention the numerous reports saying use of Juul vaporizers by teens is on the rise.

To answer this point, Burns also noted that “[Juul] also remain[s] steadfast in our commitment to preventing underage use of vapor products.” The company switched its age limit to 21+ following state and federal legislation to make 21 the minimum purchasing age. It’s also changed its social media presence to better reflect former cigarette smokers, instead of using models to market the device.

But, despite these attempts to reorient its image as a tool to help smokers quit, between April and July of this year Juul has been on the receiving end of two lawsuits filed by users in California that claim the e-cigarette actually increased their nicotine addiction.

Here’s the statement in full:

Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death worldwide, with more than 480,000 deaths in the United States each year. Our mission is to eliminate cigarette smoking in the world by providing adult smokers with a true alternative to cigarettes. We believe flavors play an important role in helping adult smokers switch to vapor technology, which offers great potential.

We fully support FDA’s efforts to curb underage use of tobacco products, and we believe restricting access to flavors will negatively impact current adult smokers in their journey to switch from combustible cigarettes. Appropriate flavors help adult smokers who do not want to be reminded of the tobacco-taste of a cigarette. We encourage FDA to allow for further scientific exploration on the role flavors play in helping adult smokers transition away from combustible cigarettes.

As JUUL Labs works to support adult smokers in their efforts to switch, we also remain steadfast in our commitment to preventing underage use of vapor products. Both goals can be achieved through reasonable regulation to restrict advertising and naming of flavors such as cotton candy and gummy bear that are directed at children. We look forward to continuing to engage with FDA, policymakers, and community leaders on helping to reduce cigarette use while protecting young people.

I love camping, but there’s always an awkward period when you’ve left the tent but haven’t yet created coffee that I hate camping. It’s hard not to watch the pot not boil and not want to just go back to bed, but since the warm air escaped when I opened the tent it’s pointless! Anyway, the Swiss figured out a great way to boil water faster, and I want one of these sweet stoves now.

The PeakBoil stove comes from design students at ETH Zurich, who have clearly faced the same problems as myself. But since they actually camp in inclement weather, they also have to deal with wind blowing out the feeble flame of an ordinary gas burner.

Their attempt to improve on the design takes the controversial step of essentially installing a stovepipe inside the vessel and heating it from the inside out rather than from the bottom up. This has been used in lots of other situations to heat water but it’s the first time I’ve seen it in a camp stove.

By carefully configuring the gas nozzles and adding ripples to the wall of the heat pipe, PeakBoil “increases the contact area between the flame and the jug,” explained doctoral student and project leader Julian Ferchow in an ETH Zurich news release.

“That, plus the fact that the wall is very thin, makes heat transfer to the contents of the jug ideal,” added his colleague Patrick Beutler.

Keeping the flames isolated inside the chimney behind baffles minimizes wind interference with the flames, and prevents you having to burn extra gas to keep it alive.

The design was created using a selective laser melting or sintering process, in which metal powder is melted in a pattern much like a 3D printer lays down heated plastic. It’s really just another form of additive manufacturing, and it gave the students “a huge amount of design freedom…with metal casting, for instance, we could never achieve channels that are as thin as the ones inside our gas burner,” Ferchow said.

Of course, the design means it’s pretty much only usable for boiling water (you wouldn’t want to balance a pan on top of it), but that’s such a common and specific use case that many campers already have a stove dedicated to the purpose.

The team is looking to further improve the design and also find an industry partner with which to take it to market. MSR, GSI, REI… I’m looking at you. Together we can make my mornings bearable.

Google will soon allow ads to run on addiction-related keywords and phrases after a nearly year-long ban instituted to crack down on shady providers cashing in on vulnerable patients. A small group of providers vetted by a third party have been approved by the company to appear in results for searches like “help quitting pills” or “meth addiction.”

The ban on these ads was rolled out in stages starting in September of last year in the U.S. and going global in January. It was provoked by a series of reports showing that people looking for help were being essentially traded like commodities and sent to incredibly expensive “addiction centers” that often provided little recovery help at all.

At the time Google pledged to keep the ban in place until it could find a way to reintroduce ads safely and ethically, and it has taken its time doing so. All addiction-related ad words were shut off completely, and while this introduced problems of its own (people searching for “help quitting pills” don’t want the WebMD page for addiction) it was probably the only logical choice.

Following this, Google partnered with LegitScript, a Portland company that specializes in verifying medicine-related businesses online. It has a 15-point checklist to make sure businesses are licensed and compliant, list medications and treatment plans, demonstrate qualifications and professionalism (i.e. not a quack operating out of their living room), have no shady history or what have you and so on. The whole list is here.

Only recovery and addiction centers vetted by LegitScript will be allowed to run ads against addiction-related queries on Google.

Recovery Centers of America (RCA), which has a handful of facilities around the country, is one of the first wave of approved advertisers.

“What they were trying to get rid of were these ‘lead aggregators’ that were posing as treatment centers, but were basically selling the patients,” said RCA’s director of marketing strategy and operations, Grant McClernon. “They wanted people who were operating under state scrutiny, providing real treatment.”

“It was a wild wild west out there,” added Bill Koroncai, the company’s director of communications. “So we support Google’s work to weed out the unethical providers in the industry.”

They explained that Google originally planned to greenlight 30 providers — which is to say facilities, of which a provider like RCA might have just one or dozens — but they were inundated with applications and had to expand the first wave of the program to closer to 100.

That’s not necessarily indicative of a rush on Google’s part; it seems more likely that the larger number turned out to be the realistic one if most regions and most needs were to be served. With 30 facilities you wouldn’t even have one in every state.

Addiction treatment providers won’t be treated any differently from other keyword purchasers, except that there will have to be a yearly check-up process through LegitScript to make sure they’re still worthy of being included.

It’s probably wise that Google didn’t get into the vetting process itself; this sets an easier precedent for the ad giant in that when conflicts like this one come up, it doesn’t have to hire a specialized team dedicated to combating fraud in that specific domain.

Ads should start running soon. I’ve contacted Google to confirm for confirmation and more information.

Some people have postulated that autonomous ridesharing cars will never need to park and cities of the future will not need street parking, parking lots or parking garages. But parking is far from dead. In fact, the $100 billion market may be poised to grow.

We’ve heard from parking startup founders that many Silicon Valley investors have rejected parking as a thing of the past, rallying around alternatives — for example, investing more than $100 million in valet parking startups that didn’t pan out. Even these parking investments are a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $80 billion invested in autonomous vehicles in just the past three years.

In these peoples’ minds, autonomous cars will simply whisk us off to our destination, then pick up another passenger, collect their groceries from Draeger’s, or simply spin around in circles waiting to pick them up again. “Autonomy is nigh, and the opportunities are endless, but parking is not one of them,” they ponder as they wait for their Tesla Model 3 to be delivered.

Sarcasm aside, parking can play a positive role in our cities today and tomorrow.

Reducing street parking for good

Parking is not dead, but maybe on-street parking should be. Dockless, free-floating, shared personal mobility devices (scooters, bicycles and more) have been dumped on cities by the likes of Bird, LimeBike and Spin. San Francisco has taken actions to “clean up” these eyesores that crowd sidewalks, with City Attorney Dennis Herrera issuing these companies cease-and-desist orders for “creating a public nuisance on the city’s streets and sidewalks.”

Voices from the transportation community were quick to point out the irony of these actions. They were quick to describe personal vehicles as dockless, free-floating, unshared personal mobility devices that are perfectly acceptable eyesores that crowd already congesting roadways.

And maybe they have a point. Off-street parking is widely available in cities, but largely underutilized. So why do we still have on-street parking? Part of the reason has been a lack of information, and at great cost. An IBM survey suggests that parking searches take between 13-32 minutes, account for up to 30 percent of traffic and produce harmful emissions. And think of the wasted gas. In today’s information age, is information a good excuse?

Admittedly less sexy than autonomous cars, parking technology companies that provide real-time parking availability in off-street garages are solving these costly search problems. For scale, MIT professor Eran Ben-Joseph estimates there are 800 million surface parking spaces in the United States and cover up to one-third of downtown land area in some cities. Increased utilization of private and municipal garages should push local governments to start removing on-street parking. This opportunity is huge for many densely populated cities.

As long as on-street parking is available, people will use it. If governments move to abandon on-street parking, then they — alongside entrepreneurs and innovators — can use the new space for more productive uses.

Ridesharing

What are those more productive use cases? One is obviously more traffic lanes to improve throughput in our congested cities. Another would be to expand bike (or shall I say, personal mobility device) lanes or even sidewalks to encourage safe pedestrian traffic. Another would be dedicated pick-up and drop-off lanes for ridesharing companies. A dedicated pick-up and drop-off curbside for ridesharing could reduce some of the congestion it may be creating in cities through ad hoc methods today. Lyft* has even proposed what a walkable, lower-congestion Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles could look like in the future.

Perhaps the cities could even make up for lost parking revenue by introducing usage fees for personal mobility devices that are free floating, or ridesharing companies that use the curbside lane.

Between parking, ridesharing and additional lanes, some folks have cited an impending battleground for the curb. It is a battle that parking should probably lose.

Autonomy

Although I would argue that billionaire investors have the picture wrong in their head, autonomous vehicles will arrive — eventually. The idea here is that autonomous cars will operate constantly, delivering passengers here, there and everywhere all day, and that the need for parking will diminish. Maybe so.

However, returning to the valet parking companies mentioned above, Zirx pivoted to Stratim Systems because they saw that there was a need to provide fleet management service for these free-floating car-share services. The same need will exist for autonomous vehicles. They will need to be refueled and/or recharged. They will need to have their interiors cleaned. They will need to have their sensors calibrated and cleaned. They will need to be repaired and maintained. Where will this happen?

Perhaps that is the future of off-street garages, and these new revenue streams are where the $100 billion market may be poised to grow. The technology-forward garages that can attract these new mobility business models by providing value-added services will be well-positioned for the ridesharing and car-sharing fleets of today and the autonomous fleets tomorrow.

The road ahead

Technology companies working with automakers, transportation network companies and fleet managers make it easy to reserve off-street parking today. They are also positioned for the future of autonomous driving tomorrow. An increase in garage utilization should diminish the need to have on-street parking, which would open up real estate for more productive use. Eventually ridesharing and autonomous fleets may cut into the parking market, but those technology-forward parking garages, and even refueling stations of today, will be able to deliver value-added services, like cashless payment, charging stations and fleet management, to their business models.

*Disclosure: Autotech Ventures is an investor in Lyft.

Yesterday, Spotify became the third tech platform in just over a week to take a stance on Alex Jones’s controversial far-right and conspiracy theorist content. The streaming service removed several Infowars podcast episodes due to their violation of the policy against hate content that Spotify released in May. This action follows strikes given against Jones by both YouTube and Facebook for videos containing content that violated those company’s policies, including Islamophobic and transphobic hate speech and child endangerment.

In a statement to Bloomberg on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Spotify said the following:

“We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community. Spotify can confirm it has removed specific episodes of ‘The Alex Jones Show’ podcast for violating our hate content policy.” 

While Spotify did not reveal the specific episodes removed or the specific terms of the policy they violated, the possibilities for removal cited in its updated policy include “content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence against people because of their race, religion, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” The policy also states that these violations do not necessarily include “offensive, explicit, or vulgar content,” but specifically hate speech with the intention to cause harm.

Other episodes of the Infowars podcast are still available on Spotify, as well as Apple Podcast and Stitcher.

While this strike against Jones does come on the heels of YouTube and Facebook’s previous actions, Jones is not the first to have content removed via Spotify’s new policy. In May, the company pulled music from R. Kelly and rappers XXXTentacion and Tay-K as well.

To monitor its service for content violating its hate speech policy, Spotify is collaborating with rights advocacy groups such as The Southern Poverty Law Center, The Anti-Defamation League, Color Of Change, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), GLAAD, Muslim Advocates, and the International Network Against Cyber Hate. Additionally, the company has built an internal monitoring tool called Spotify AudioWatch and is asking users to help flag hate content.

Decisions to police hate speech on tech platforms like Spotify, YouTube and Facebook have stirred up a lot of strong emotions on both sides of the debate. Balanced between open source and private enterprise, the path forward for these companies to create the safest and simultaneously “most free” space for their users is still being precariously trekked daily.

Say what you will about the success or general usefulness of the Moto Mod line — Motorola keeps plugging away. The company currently offers 17 Mods with an 18th on the way, bringing one of the most interesting use cases yet.

Along with the new Moto Z3 handset, Motorola unveiled a Mod that will bring 5G connectivity to the entire line via Verizon’s nascent network. Due out early next year for an undisclosed sum, the new Mod presents an interesting workaround to the pains of introducing a next-generation network to a handset.

With this backdoor approach, the company is able put the Z3 up for sale on August 16th, and work another half-year or so to get its ducks in a row on the 5G front. Perhaps Verizon’s 5G coverage map will be a bit more dense by then, though at present, the company has only announced three cities — Houston, Los Angeles and, oddly, Sacramento. A fourth unnamed city is also on tap to get coverage by the end of the year.

At the very least, this lets Motorola tout the claim of being one of — if not the — first phones to offer the technology to U.S. customers. The company also claims that putting this tech directly into the phone would have been much more resource intensive than just sticking it and an extended battery inside the mod.

I’m not sure how much I buy that line of reasoning, but it certainly helps keep the cost of the handset down — the new Z3 will be available for $480 unlocked. The company has long focused on providing budget options for users, and that’s certainly the case here, helped along by some good — but last-generation — silicon like the Snapdragon 835. 

Motorola also likely didn’t feel confident that most users would be willing to take the plunge on a 5G phone at this early stage. As for the phone itself, it looks pretty similar to the recently introduced Moto Z3 Play in most respects. There’s a six-inch display, a 3,000mAh battery and dual-cameras with depth sensing and Google lens built in. No word yet on whether Verizon will eventually bundle the phone with that new mod.

Disclosure: Verizon owns Oath, Oath owns TechCrunch.

Uproxx Media Group — owner of sites like HitFix, Dime and Uproxx itself — has been acquired.

The Uproxx site focuses on entertainment and pop culture news, and was founded back in 2008. It was bought by Woven Digital in 2014, which eventually rebranded as Uproxx. Like many digital media companies, it includes both a publishing arm and a studio that works with marketers to create videos and other branded content.

Today, Warner Music Group announced that it’s buying the company and its portfolio of websites (minus BroBible, which will continue to operate independently). The company says Uproxx will still to be run by CEO and Chief Creative Benjamin Blank, along with co-founder and Publisher Jarret Myer, and that the individual sites will still have editorial independence.

Back in the 1990s, Myer (pictured above) was one of the founders of hip hop label Rawkus Records, where he worked with Max Lousada — who would eventually become Warner’s CEO of Global Recorded Music.

“UPROXX brings together pioneering personalities and credible brands in ways that move huge audiences to talk, listen and share,” Lousada said in the acquisition announcement. “It’ll be exciting to collaborate with Jarret again, along with Ben and their team, who will thrive in the creative and entrepreneurial environment we’re building. They’ll be great partners as we redefine what it means to be a dynamic, future-focused music company.”

Warner says Uproxx reaches an audience of 40 million people through its websites and other platforms.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Uproxx raised a total of $43.3 million from investors including IVP, Advancit Capital and WPP Ventures.

Early in 2017, Google added a feature to Google Maps that lets you opt to share your location in (near) real time with your close friends and family. Now they’re fleshing out that info with another important little detail: your phone’s remaining battery charge.

It looks like this:

Wondering why anyone might care about the status of your battery?

If you try to ping someone’s location and their phone is dead, there’s not much an app can do. Most location sharing apps will just sit there and spin while it waits for some sort of response, leaving you to worry about all the reasons their phone might not be responding with a current location. Did they lose signal? Did someone steal their phone?

By clueing you in on whether someone’s phone is just about to die, you’ve at least got a better idea as to what’s going on.

The folks over at AndroidPolice spotted this in a Google Maps APK tear down back in February, so we knew it was on the way. A few people have mentioned seeing it pop up on their devices since (including variations that only showed when the battery was low), but today it seems to have gone live for a much larger audience.

While the feature is clever, Google isn’t the first to think of it. For example: Zenly, the social map app acquired by Snapchat last year, had a similar feature at launch back in 2016.

Amazon has applied for a patent for an audio system that detects the accent of a speaker and changes it to the accent of the listener, perhaps helping eliminate communication barriers in many situations and industries. The patent doesn’t mean the company has made it (or necessarily that it will be granted), but there’s also no technical reason why it can’t do so.

The application, spotted by Patent Yogi, describes “techniques for accent translation.” Although couched in the requisite patent-ese, the method is quite clear. After a little translation of my own, here’s what it says:

In a two-party conversation, received audio is analyzed to see if it matches with one of a variety of stored accents. If so, the input audio from each party is outputted based on the accent of the other party.

It’s kind of a no-brainer, especially considering all the work that’s being done right now in natural language processing. Accents can be difficult to understand, especially if you haven’t spoken with an individual before, and especially without the critical cues from facial and body movements that make in-person communication so much more effective.

The most obvious place for an accent translator to be deployed is in support, where millions of phone calls take place regularly between people in distant countries. It’s the support person’s goal to communicate clearly and avoid adding to the caller’s worries with language barriers. Accent management is a major part of these industries; support personnel are often required to pass language and accent tests in order to advance in the organization they work for.

A computational accent remover would not just improve their lot, but make them far more effective. Now a person with an Arabic accent can communicate just as well with just about anyone who speaks the same language — no worries if the person on the other end has heavily Austrian, Russian, or Korean-accented English; if it’s English, it should work.

There are of course lots of other situations where this could be helpful — while traveling, for instance, or conducting international business. I’m sure you can think of a few situations of your own from the last few months or years where an accent reducer or translator would have been handy.

As for the actual execution of this system, that’s a big unknown. But Amazon has a huge amount of money and engineering talent dedicated to natural language processing, and there’s nothing about this system that strikes me as unrealistic or unattainable with existing technology.

It would be a machine learning model, of course, or rather a set of them, each trained on several hours of speech by people with a specific accent. Good thing Alexa has a worldwide presence! Amazon has an avalanche of audio samples coming in from Echoes and other devices all over the place, so many accents are likely already accounted for in their library. From there it’s just a matter of soliciting voice recordings from any group that’s underrepresented in that dataset.

Research along these lines has certainly been done already, but Amazon seems to have the jump on others on the creation of a specific system for using that knowledge in product form.

Notably the patent allows for a bit of cheating on the system’s part: it doesn’t have to scramble during the first few seconds to identify your accent, but can stack the deck a bit by checking the device’s location, phone number, previous accents encountered on that line, or of course simply allowing the speaker to pick their accent manually. Of course there will still be a variety within, say, a selected accent of “Pakistani,” but with enough data the system should be able to detect and accommodate those as well.

As always with patents there’s no guarantee this will actually take product form; it could just be research or a “defensive” patent intended to prevent rivals from creating a system like this in the meantime. But in this case I feel confident that there’s a real possibility a product will ship in the next year or so.