The venture capital arm of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health is backing a startup that is developing a conversational artificial intelligence platform that mimics human speech.
Northwell Holdings participated in a $50 million series B funding round March 27 for Hume AI, which was founded by a former Google researcher to provide "near-human-level conversation" with AI. Northwell has already invested several million dollars in the "emotionally intelligent" voice interface.
Health systems are increasingly using conversational AI bots to talk on the phone with patients, for appointment scheduling and care management, like seeing whether they're taking prescribed medications. And the platforms are beginning to sound more like living, breathing people.
Hume AI, for instance, is trained — using a so-called empathetic large language model — to know when to start and stop speaking and learn from the rhythms of human speech, such as "umms" and "ahhs," to keep becoming more lifelike.