SESTEK is the company behind many products using voice technologies – from call center applications to home assistants. Established by a Boğaziçi University faculty member Prof. Levent Aslan, the company aims to be the leader in the Turkish market as well as the global league with the variety of software and services they have developed.
The rapid advances in the Internet and mobile technologies are offering users the opportunity to benefit from a variety of services using many different channels that were not known before. Another equally important point is the privacy and security of personal information these technologies are able to offer.
Today, conventional security measures such as PIN codes, passwords or security questions remain inadequate in the face of fraud and identity theft, which is becoming increasingly common. Like many new technologies, voice technologies are developed not only to diversify user experience and increase customer satisfaction but also to eliminate security gaps.
SESTEK (System Enabled Software Technologies), founded by Professor Levent Aslan of Boğaziçi University Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, is a technology company that has accomplished many ‘firsts’ in this field in Turkey; the company has also been conducting significant R&D work.
SESTEK’s objective is to become the leader not only in Turkey but in global platforms as well; the company has sales offices in the United States and Dubai. In 2016, SESTEK was selected as the Best Technology Solution Provider at the Call Center Week Excellence Awards in Las Vegas.
Founded in the year 2000, SESTEK was the first company in Turkey to develop the technology that converts speech to text. The products and software developed by the company are favored by leaders in many sectors trading in the Istanbul Stock Exchange, ranging from banking and financial services to telecommunication.
Prof. Aslan teaches three days a week at Boğaziçi University, dedicating the rest of his time to developing a wide range of advanced technology products from customer analysis to voice recognition software. He works with a team of 70 people at SESTEK at Istanbul Technical University’s Teknokent.
He developed software that enabled Ky-Mani Marley to sing in a language he did not speak
Upon graduating from BU Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Aslan went to the United States and received his PhD from Duke University. It was during his doctoral studies at Duke that Aslan decided to work on voice technologies. One of his first accomplishments in the field of voice technologies is particularly of interest: he developed software that could synthesize the sound of a person’s voice and use it to speak a language that he did not speak. The software enabled Ky-Mani Marley, the son of famous reggae singer Bob Marley, to sing in Spanish although he did not speak the language.
After his return to Turkey, Aslan began developing voice synthesis and voice recognition products for Turkish language. He first founded GVZ company with Koç Holding, and then another company at Boğaziçi University KOSGEB to continue the work he began in the United States. In 2007 he merged the two companies under the name SESTEK. Today GVZ is a brand name for SESTEK’s individual solutions. SESTEK has headquarters in Ankara and Istanbul and sales offices in the United States and Dubai.
Currently SESTEK offers solutions in the categories of Voice Biometrics, Speech Analytics, Call Transfer, Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech Transcription technologies to their customers in financial services, banking and insurance sectors, telecommunications, as well as GSM Operators and public institutions.
SESTEK products are used in various industries today
One of the important products in the field of artificial intelligence is the chatbot, introduced by Microsoft a short time ago. SESTEK is developing a chatbot that will employ artificial intelligence specifically in the healthcare sector. The company has also developed some software that enables Natural Dialogue between a human and a machine; such software is used predominantly in banking and finance institutions.
A recent project that SESTEK has taken part in is the Intelligent Home Assistant. Its prototype was displayed by Arçelik during the Innovation Week – Turkey 2016.
The Intelligent Home Assistant will be used for online shopping, banking transactions, placing takeout orders, or paying bills; users will also be able to rapidly reach a variety of information that can facilitate daily life. The Intelligent Home Assistant will also meet some emergency needs such as finding an on-call pharmacy or locating the nearest hospital; users will be able to keep up with current news or movies showing in the theaters. And all one has to do to reach all these services is to speak with the Intelligent Home Assistant.
The product will be marketed by the end of the year. By means of the automatic voice recognition and natural language processing technologies developed by SESTEK, devices understand the user’s speech and answer questions in the Turkish language.
Levent Aslan, founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of SESTEK is developing a similar application for vehicles. Among the projects he is working on currently is a Voice Biometrics product that is being developed for Turkish Telecom. This application authenticates users through their voice, eliminating the need for such information as mother’s maiden name. It also provides a high level of security and significantly reduces the time spent on interacting with call center representatives, thus increasing customer satisfaction.
Artificial intelligence can detect fraudulent voice recordings
Prof. Aslan gives the following information on SESTEK products: “We have a Voice Synthesis product that converts text to voice; another is the Speech Analytics product widely used in call centers. While converting voice to text, we can also measure and analyze certain parameters such as the quality of service provided by customer representatives, or most common customer complaints.”
“Furthermore, we have added artificial intelligence learning algorithms to our software. For example, with artificial intelligence algorithms, we can detect and analyze conversations that carry a risk of fraud in an insurance company. This technology is currently being used.”
A translation system is being developed to enable Syrian immigrants to communicate with Turkish doctors
Aslan explains that in the near future he and his team will start work on a medical translation project for immigrants, to enable patients who do not speak Turkish to communicate with Turkish doctors. The system will be tried out at a hospital in the Southeastern region of Turkey.
Today human voice is the key enabler of human-machine interface, determining our relationship with machines. Aslan says, “We have been operating machines by pressing a button or by using a keyboard. At some point it will be possible to run the human-machine relationship through the human voice. We are living in an age where we will use the human voice in such technologies in our homes, cars and offices. In addition, as the population ages, their social needs are gaining in importance. The elderly will now be able to listen to the news or read a book by means of voice technologies.”
News: Ö. Duygu Durgun / Office of Corporate Communications
Photographs: Kenan Özcan