A small AI startup sued Perplexity AI, alleging the $20 billion company used a promised long-term partnership to extract proprietary technology for initiating voice communications with AI systems then built its own system with that stolen technology.
The “wake word” technology is a “critical gatekeeper for the use of AI assistants” because it allows a device to continuously listen for a word or phrase that activates the tool, SytteMLLabs, which does business as DaVoice, said in a heavily-redacted complaint filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
“Innovators earn their rewards. Imitators steal them,” the …