Cerence Unveils Enhanced, AI-Powered Biometrics Engine for Deeper Security

Cerence Inc., AI for a world in motion, today introduced its next-generation, AI-powered biometrics engine in Cerence Assistant, providing enhanced personalization and security capabilities for the mobility experience. Powered by the latest advances in AI, Cerence Voice Biometrics is now more accurate at creating driver profiles; identifying who is speaking; and enabling deeper opportunities for safe, secure, and individualized interactions with the in-car assistant.

Available across a multitude of global languages, Cerence’s next-generation biometrics solution is optimized for automotive and mobility use cases, putting the user at the forefront with a frictionless experience, providing the highest identification accuracies in a low-footprint, embedded solution. Going beyond voice, multimodal cabin biometrics are designed to support multimodal identification throughout the cabin, offering a more convenient and secure identification and authorization process. This allows users to automatically log in to their preferred biometric modality and configure step-up authentication for sensitive tasks, providing a frictionless authentication and authorization solution that can adapt based on context. For example, drivers can identify themselves with facial recognition when starting the car, and authorize a payment with their voice while on the road.

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Architected to be embedded within the car for security and convenience, Cerence Voice Biometrics is core to Cerence’s multimodal biometrics capabilities, powering a range of authenticated, personalized experiences, including:

• Transparent, proactive enrollment and easy sign-in – The in-car assistant can learn speakers and their unique voices with only a few interactions and proactively offer to create a voiceprint once enough voice data has been gathered. This eliminates the need for drivers and each of their passengers to set up personal profiles with prescriptive phrases. From there, each time users enter the car, they are authenticated upon their first interaction with the voice assistant, whether it’s “Good morning, Cerence,” or “Drive me to the office.”
• Authenticated interaction from outside the car – Cerence Exterior Vehicle Interaction (EVI) is a suite of AI and voice-powered innovations that enables drivers to interact with their cars from the outside. To maintain safety and security, Cerence EVC now also leverages voice biometrics to limit certain capabilities to approved users only. For example, for security-relevant functions such as unlocking the car or opening the trunk, Cerence Voice Biometrics verifies the speaker’s identity to provide an additional level of protection and security.
• Convenient and secure payments – When integrated with in-car commerce apps, Cerence Voice Biometrics is a powerful tool for authorizing payments with no extra legwork by the user. Perfect while driving, your voice interaction is passively verified, offering an uninterrupted, secure transaction.
• Next-level control – Using the technology’s age detection capabilities, in-car assistants can offer parental controls to voice interactions, limiting what functions children can activate and what content they can access, including ensuring safe web searches in the car via Cerence Browse. Similarly, smart-home connectivity commands such as “Open the garage door” can be restricted by driver profile, user, age and speaker identity.
• Easy language switch – Using Cerence Voice Biometrics, Cerence Assistant can automatically adapt the dialogue and infotainment system language to match the user’s spoken language. This allows users to interact naturally with the in-car assistant, providing a seamless and personalized experience.

“Biometrics is a critical piece of virtual assistant interaction, especially in cases where multiple users are interacting with a single assistant,” said Prateek Kathpal, Chief Technology Officer, Cerence. “Our next-generation biometrics engine in Cerence Assistant represents an important step in our ability to serve automakers and their drivers with a AI-powered, frictionless experience that takes minimal effort from the user but provides maximum impact in terms of personalization and security.”

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