Sonos announces Sonos Voice Control, its own voice assistant

Sonos Voice Control is the name of a new voice assistant. Sonos will offer it on its speakers and sound bars. Users have until now had the right to Google Assistant or Alexa from Amazon.

Sonos presents its voice assistant

How does Sonos Voice Control compare to Google and Amazon assistants? It is a little less complete in terms of voice requests, contenting itself with the bare minimum. You can control music and speakers in any room, move music from space to space, save and “like” your favorite songs to your personal music library, and more. Sonos also boasts the argument of confidentiality: all requests are processed locally, nothing is sent to remote servers.

“Voice is one of the most natural ways to connect with music. But talking to our users, we found that for many of them, fears about their privacy made them give up using voice control”, Explain Joseph Dureau, vice-president of the Voice Experience. This is where a home solution comes in. It must be said that the company was in conflict with Google and Amazon for patent matters, which must have pushed it to create its own system to no longer depend on them.

Sonos Voice Control works on all of the brand’s speakers that support voice control. It’s available on all new products and offered for free via an update to the Sonos app. When launched, the assistant will be compatible with Sonos Radio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Pandora. Subsequently, other services (Spotify?) will be added.

The assistant will be available from June 1 in the United States. Users will hear the voice of actor Giancarlo Esposito (breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Mandalorian). For France and other countries, the launch will take place by the end of the year, without a more precise date.