voice assistants

Leak suggests a Sonos Voice Assistant launch is imminent

Code found in the company's mobile app shows that the assistant will work simultaneously with Alexa, but not Google Assistant.

A Sonos speaker

Sonos speakers are about to get another voice assistant.

Photo: Sonos

Sonos may be getting close to the launch of its own voice assistant: Code traces found in the company's mobile app suggest that the company has been preparing the launch of "Sonos Voice Control," an assistant focused on playback and device control.

A Sonos spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The code snippets were posted this week by a Reddit user, who was also able to unearth the assistant's icon: a speech bubble not too dissimilar from the one used by Amazon's Alexa assistant.

Those images also suggest that the assistant can be activated in addition to Alexa, making it possible for Sonos owners to invoke either assistant by using specific wake words. The same doesn't seem to be true for Google Assistant, with the images suggesting that the two assistants won't be able to be activated on the same device.

Google has long insisted that technical issues prevent it from running Google Assistant in addition to another voice assistant. Sonos executives have rejected that claim, and alleged that Google's voice assistant policies are anti-competitive. The issue took center stage at a recent antitrust hearing, during which a Google representative signaled that the company may be willing to change its tune over time.

In addition to the interoperability issues, the leak also shines a light on some of the features Sonos Voice Control will be supporting: Users will be able to launch and control music playback and volume, change which speakers music is playing on and check the battery level of portable Sonos devices.

Sonos began working on its own voice assistant when it purchased Paris-based Snips in 2019. Sonos Voice VP Joseph Dureau, who previously served as the CTO of Snips, recently joined Protocol's Future of Voice event, where he said that the company wants to offer people the ability to use multiple voice assistants similar to the way they already use multiple music services. "We think that you should be able to switch from one assistant to the other," Dureau said. "That is something that's dear to our heart."
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