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Alright, so our next guest is here, and we're gonna look.

Hello guys,

Hello, welcome, Sergio Del Rio from Waverly Labs.

Welcome. Hey, how's it going?

It's going good.

Good to be here.

Yeah. So tell us about what you're demonstrating at CES. And what Waverly Labs is all about.

Alright, so we do voice translation solutions. We've been in the market for five years now. And we have, you know, really specialized into trying to nail down the problem of translation. Alright, so we have three solutions. The first one is this one, AMBASSADOR. So what he does is this little earpiece that you plays in your ear, everything I'm saying has been recorded, and then the other earpieces, you will hear the translation directly in your ears, right? So he's gonna whisper the translation.

Right,

We focus a lot on accuracy and speed. So it has to be very fast for it in order for it to be like a fluent conversation, as if you knew the language, right. So yeah, you can connect up to four of those devices, you can also give a lecture or a conference using one of those, so you plug like the audio system and the on your phone, and then you can you know, translate for 1000 people 2000 people. And also, you can do the reverse, and you can sit down in an audience and hear everything that's being said in another language. So the idea is to break the language barriers, you know, include a lot of people that maybe it's not participating in the, in the market. And also, you know, and yeah, Bring, bring a little bit more of empathy and compassion and everything.

You know, oh, gosh, this is just a topic that is so close to the heart to me for you know, as an example, for years, traveling in Japan was always. It's difficult because of the language barrier, and you know, some people speak English, you know, my Japanese is very minor. But now that I'm visiting, like Latin America, and you know, speak, I don't speak Spanish. So you know, the Spanish translation stuff, I'm on the phone using a translator, it's awkward. I know, this is more of a person, a person thing. But still, if I can be someplace, I'm having a challenge in hand, someone a headset, and they put it on there. And I can talk, and it speaks Spanish to them. Right? And vice versa,

and vice versa. And the other thing now that you say Latin America, we don't only have languages, we don't translate it say Spanish to English, we translate dialects. So Colombian Spanish to British English. Wow. So that increases the accuracy of the translation a lot. Yeah, we don't have slang. We don't have expressions just to,

That is right.

Wanna keep it as close.

And it's, it's now in a headset form. I've seen stuff in the past where it was like a little, almost the same size of a cell phone type of deal. How many languages?

It has 20 languages and 43 dialects. So yeah, those are like the main languages in the world, you know, like, you're rarely going to need something different. We did want to focus on quality not rather than incorporating like 58 languages or whatever. So those are the 20 languages that we really can deliver, you know.

So is Portuguese on the list.

Portuguese, we have Brazilian and Portuguese from Portugal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

And also, well, this is our first solution.

Yep.

We also are presenting now at the booth the solution we call Subtitles. It's pretty much like having subtitles in the real world. Like if you're watching a Korean movie with English subtitles, like that. So it's a COVID screen. So it protects you from COVID infections. And also, what I'm saying, let's say I speak in Spanish, you'll hear you'll read the translation in English right there in real-time. So it's very fast. Reading is faster than listening.

Yup.

So you can even like you know, just like skim through it and have more like a newly real-time conversation.

Sure.

It's great for, like, you know, customer service, hotels, restaurants, ticket selling and stuff like that. Plus, they could take the protection of COVID. Right.

Right.

And he has like zero installation times. You just like present yourself into the window. Select your language. Start talking. So-

Interesting.

That one has been getting a lot of good reviews with reception. People like it, you know, because yeah, it's kind of a, like a Netflix movie but in real life.

Yeah, the thing that drives me crazy about using my cell phone. It can be ordinary. Yeah, like you hit trance, you speak English. And, of course, it's trying to catch up. And if you've downloaded the language set, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they get stuck or the audio stops and just oh,

Well, that all depends on connectivity, too, which I was just about to ask. Is this? Do you have to use an app interface with this or anything like that? Is this proprietary within itself?

Yeah, nope.

Or self-contained?

Correct. No, you do need to get- download the app.

Okay.

And the reason for that is that we do all the translation in our cloud because the quality of translation is way better. If you try to do it on a device, it's very limited to the processing power that we have in a phone. And it actually starts heating up a lot and burning your battery. We don't want to do that.

Sure, sure.

But in the cloud, you get, like, really accurate translation.

Okay.

Also very accurate speech recognition. That is like the secret also of our product.

So you have to have connectivity?

Correct. Yeah. But if you have 3G, it's enough. You know, obviously, 4G, 5G, then it flies Wi-Fi. That's incredible.

Right.

Yeah, 3G, it's more than enough.

Even hardline connection is even better.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's-

That's what I was gonna say in my industry. I work in the live events industry, and frequently, we are setting up four or five translation booths in the back of the room, where somebody is real-time.

Right?

Send any one of those is on a different transmitter.

Right.

You gotta pass them out before people come in.

Yeah.

But to be able to have this in the back of the room.

Right.

Just a couple of 100 units, whatever, well, and have the app plugged into a computer on a hard line internet connection, that is an entire cost saver.

It's a big cost saver. And actually, now that you're saying about the events, let me introduce you to the third solution that we have, it's called AUDIENCE. Oh, so it's actually replacing everything that you were just talking about right now. Replacing the little boxes and receptors, the headphones, the booth in the back, etc.,

Right.

With this, I can plug in a microphone directly.

Yep.

I can be speaking. I select. I create, let's say, a new conference. I put the title of the conference, my language, the language of the audience, the gender, and then people can join with a QR code or just typing in, right. So you can translate, let's say

Cool. Yah. You can put that up on the projector, and they can shoot it, and they're in there now.

People download the app quickly on the phone because it's a five-megabyte app. So it's really fast, and they get the translation directly on their phones, even if they're like in a different country, you know, so they could be doing that live session. So we want to save all those costs for the event organizers because it's already a lot of logistics when you organize an event like that.

Yeah.

And actually, right now, the app is free. We're gonna, you know, we want to demo it. Get it, get more like insights in everything in the event. But yeah, yeah, the machine translation is very, very accurate. We have actually compared it with human translation, and sometimes it's better because machines have no limit in memory. So like, the computers know all the words, they have all the dictionaries, right? Yeah. So they don't have those limitations.

Yeah.

So two devices, one phone, he connected those via Bluetooth, I'm assuming so that when both devices sync to the same phone, I'm assum-.

Correct. You can, in the Ambassador solution, because for Audience you don't need.

Right.

You can do. But for Ambassador, you can connect up to four. And all of them are bidirectional, meaning that you record and then you receive audio at the same time.

So you have those in your pocket, if you're in a bar, or if you're in an emergency room, or wherever you are. You can plug somebody in and just have the conversation.

Right. Yeah. And actually, at the end of the conversation, you can download the transcript if you want. So let's say you had a business meeting, or you had an organization meeting, or whatever event. Then you can review the details, you know, what time were we gonna meet up at that? Oh, 3 pm or whatever, because then you can download it in PDF, and send it with everybody in email or whatever,

And especially for meetings, that kind of stuff to be able to have minutes.

Correct.

I'm thinking about this, obviously, you're thinking about the business application. I'm thinking about the social application.

Oh sure. Sure.

You know, and really that ability to have a conversation with somebody and not be sitting there "tat tat tat tat."

Yeah.

Even to put our podcast through that.

Right.

And be able to tell people.

That's right.

Download the app. You could listen to it in any way that you want.

Yeah, that'd be very cool to try. Yeah. But it's incredible.

What's the pricing, then? What are we looking at?

For the Ambassador is $179, and that's it. You don't pay annual fees. You don't pay membership. You don't pay anything.

Okay.

Audience, I was saying, is free. And this Screen we think is going to be about $550. The Subtitles, the Screen, is a big screen and two front screens. Yep.

Awesome. Waverly.

Outstandingly affordable.

Yeah.

Correct. Way more affordable than, you know, a language class.

Yeah. No. Absolutely.

You know, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing. Do you have? I'm just curious about the full language set. So I'm gonna have to go on the website and review that. But Waverly, is it waverlylabs.com or what's? Is that the website? Correct. We're waverlylabs.com Yeah, Waverlylabs.com. And I'm assuming, based on the packaging, that most of this is available except for the Screen. The Screen is new.

Yeah. The Screen is new. I think we're gonna launch it by the mid of this year. We're, you know, finalizing the components because, as you know, this is very hard now with like the supply chain issues.

Yeah.

We just want to get the casting like really, really like well done.

Right.

But yeah, yeah, we're aiming maybe for July or something to get the product out of the market.

How's the response been so far to this?

Well, actually, it's very good for the Subtitles has been like way better than we thought.

Wow.

I think it works very well for video and podcasts and stuff like that, like for YouTubers. They'll go crazy because, like, you know, you recording one side, whatever, and then turn around. And then you see the translation, and you see how fast interactions become.

Yeah.

Like yesterday I was having a conversation the Spanish Arabic. Of course, I had no idea what he was saying in Arabic.

Right?

But, you know, it became like a fun conversation, and he was joking and stuff like that. So it was like, wow, this is like you and for a video like everything does YouTube and stuff. They get crazy about it. And customers really like Ambassador. They're like, you know, they see the benefit right there in their ears.

Yeah.

They see the speed. So yeah.

Yeah. Very, very-. Now see. We're talking about cool things we found this show. Right here, this number two.

This is. This was on my three-and-a-half-page list of booths to find to interview because when I saw this, and went to their website and started researching it.

Yeah.

It's like, this is groundbreaking technology.

Yeah, this is cool. How long? How long? Have you guys been in business?

We've been in business for five years now. Yeah. Developing and improving. Every month we try to release new updates and improve the product constantly. So we buy it now, six months down the road is going to be a way better product still. Yeah.

Awesome.

We're pretty passionate about this problem.

You're leveraging some fantastic AI to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right, Waverlylabs.com. Sergio, thanks for coming on. This is exciting. Good luck with you in the show and further expansion.

It's a pleasure to be here, guys. Thanks. Thanks for your time.

Yeah, thank you.

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker. Associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts are Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been Tech Podcasts Network Production, copyright 2022.