Roblox acquires voice moderation startup Speechly

In a company blog post, Speechly founder and CTO Hannes Heikinheimo said, “We are excited to announce that Speechly is joining Roblox! We founded Speechly in 2016 with the belief that voice was the future of interaction online and our mission was to enable more delightful computer voice interactions and to empower and enhance communication between people. We are proud of the speech recognition product and solutions our team created that enabled fast, real-time and cost-efficient voice moderation helping developers reduce toxic behavior in online communities. Roblox is building the leading platform for 3D immersive communication and connection. Everyday 65.5 million daily active users of all ages come to Roblox to be together, experience and create memories with friends. With the addition of new voice features, including voice chat, Roblox is solving new challenges-moderating spoken language in real time. Safety and civility are foundational to Roblox. We are excited to be joining a company dedicated to safety and civility and to use our AI expertise to evolve traditional methods of moderation to meet the scale, real-time and dynamic needs of a user generated content platform. It’s the same focus we have had at Speechly. We share Roblox’s vision for safe and civil immersive communication and bringing more dynamic and nuanced interactivity to the platform through safe and civil voice features.”