Insight
LiveKit CEO: Hallucination is a feature in voice AI interfaces
“Well, you know, it's one of those things that I think is funny, like, people talk about hallucinations as this bad thing but in a lot of ways for, like, kind of this speech-to-speech interaction model where you're talking to an AI, Hallucination is a feature.”
Insight
Russ d'Sa: AI hallucination is a feature in voice interfaces
“People talk about hallucinations as this bad thing, but in a lot of ways, for like, kind of this speech-to-speech interaction model, where you're talking to an AI, Hallucination is a feature.”
Assertion Supported
Russ d'Sa: LLM inference is now faster than text-to-speech generation
“Now like LLM inference can actually be done in less time than generating speech with TTS.”
Insight
Russ d'Sa: 300 to 500 ms turn latency crosses voice AI uncanny valley
“Getting that latency end to end down, you know, to 300 milliseconds or 500 milliseconds on average for, like, turn latency that, that, that kind of helps you cross this uncanny valley for voice AI.”
Assertion Supported
LiveKit's d'Sa: LiveKit built the infrastructure for OpenAI's ChatGPT voice modes
“Fast forward, like, about a year and a half, two years, and, ah, we built a demo when ChatGPT first came out, ah, where you could talk to it instead of text with it using LiveKit's infrastructure, and a few months later, OpenAI ended up finding it, ah, wanted …”
Prediction Held up
Russ d'Sa: AI models will implicitly match user pacing within two years
“Then there's another part of it, which I think will come in the next, you know, year or two where the model will implicitly be intelligent enough to pick up on what your pacing is or your state of mind is just based on the way that you're talking and expressin…”
Assertion Supported
Russ d'Sa: LiveKit closes Series B funding round led by Altimeter Capital
“And so we closed a series B today. That's led by Altimeter Capital.”
Assertion Supported
D'Sa: LiveKit partnered with OpenAI to build ChatGPT voice mode
“We built a demo when ChatGPT first came out, ah, where you could talk to it instead of text with it using LiveKit's infrastructure, and a few months later, OpenAI ended up finding it, ah, wanted to build a voice interface to ChatGPT, And we started to work pre…”
Assertion Supported
D'Sa: LLM inference is now faster than TTS speech generation
“And now like LLM inference can actually be done in less time than generating speech with TTS.”
Insight
D'Sa: 300-500ms latency crosses the voice AI uncanny valley
“I think, like, getting that latency end to end down, you know, to 300 milliseconds or 500 milliseconds on average for, like, turn latency that, that, that kind of helps you cross this uncanny valley for voice AI.”
Insight
D'Sa: Ultra-fast voice AI latency yields diminishing returns
“There's also kind of diminishing returns after a while. To give you an example, I once built this Cerebris demo. I used like a Lama seven B or eight B Lama eight B have to remember these numbers on the primary accounts, but Lama eight B hooked up to Cerebris. …”
Prediction Held up
D'Sa: Voice models will adapt to user pacing within two years
“Then there's another part of it, which I think will come in the next, you know, year or two where the model will implicitly be intelligent enough to pick up on what your pacing is or your state of mind is just based on the way that you're talking and expressin…”
Assertion Supported
LiveKit closes $45M Series B led by Altimeter Capital
“And so we closed a series B today. That's led by Altimeter Capital.”
Insight
d'Sa: Modern live sports broadcasting is not true real-time synchronization
“And so the technology that we use for live broadcasts of sports games is not true real time technology. Not everyone is synchronized in the same way that in 1969 when the, you know, the lunar landing everybody saw that at the same time because there's a server…”
Disclosure
D'Sa: LiveKit partners with Cerebras and Groq for hardware inference
“Well, so we, like, I mean, we partner with, like, folks like Cerebris and Drock. And so we allow you to kind of plug in their models and plug in effectively their hardware accelerated inference. And so we're compatible with that world.”
Disclosure
D'Sa: 75-80% of LiveKit cloud signups are building voice AI agents
“We're doing like thousands and thousands, many, several thousands of like signups to the cloud product or commercial product. And most of those, the vast majority are startups and growing companies. And out of those, probably around 75% or so, 80% of those sig…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Playback will integrate AI voice commentary overlays for fans
“Playback they're also going to integrate you know, AI into that flow as well, like a voice based commentator or whatever that can watch the game and, Provide an overlay for fans”
