Mercedes moves its in-car voice assistant onto the car itself
Mercedes-Benz has begun pushing Liquid AI's on-device language models to cars in North America by over-the-air update, with cloud models kept as the fallback.
Cartesia launches Managed Agents, a voice agent platform it says tops independent benchmarks
Cartesia says its Managed Agents voice platform ranks first of 30 agents on Artificial Analysis's Speech Agent Arena, at $0.03 a minute at launch.
Cresta opens its AI agent platform to developers with end-to-end self-service
Cresta now lets developers build, test and deploy customer-facing AI agents themselves, using its Conductor tooling and a new training academy.
Deepgram to acquire Daily, the company behind open-source voice agent framework Pipecat
Deepgram is acquiring Daily, maker of the Pipecat voice agent framework, and says Pipecat will stay open source under an independent foundation.
Hunar.AI raises ₹40 crore Series A led by Blume to scale conversational AI for frontline hiring
Hunar.AI's voice and chat agents handle hiring, onboarding and training for frontline workers. It plans to reach 5 million conversations a day.
Conversational AI Meetup returns to London on 22 October, hosted at Lloyds Banking Group
The Conversational AI Meetup is back in London on 22 October at Lloyds Banking Group, with free talks on conversation design and testing AI agents.
American Express publishes framework to keep AI agents' purchases tied to what customers approved
Amex's Intent Intelligence framework captures what a customer approved before an AI agent buys, then uses it as a control through checkout.
Sierra and Meta launch Personal Agent Protocol to set rules for AI agents dealing with businesses
Sierra and Meta's Personal Agent Protocol lets consumers authorise AI agents over OAuth while businesses control what those agents can do.
Backbase makes Conversational Banking generally available, with AI agents acting on customer requests
Backbase's Conversational Banking, now generally available, lets AI agents complete bank requests by voice or text within bank-set permissions.
Jack Lundstedt Titi, CEO and Co-Founder, Vetz
Vetz's co-founder on why a vet consultation is harder to transcribe than a GP's, juggling languages mid-appointment, and why "AI scribe" will soon feel outdated.
Cisco's Dialog lets Webex AI agents keep working after the customer conversation ends
Cisco's new Dialog harness lets Webex AI agents keep working on a customer's issue after the conversation ends, as Claude and OpenAI come to Webex.
Automation Anywhere to acquire Boost.ai, adding conversational and voice AI to its automation platform
Automation Anywhere has agreed to buy Boost.ai from Nordic Capital, its second AI acquisition in a year, with the deal due to close in Q4 2026.