A system and method for making a call to a service provider on behalf of a user is disclosed. The system and method include using an intelligent voice assistant to call the service provider and having the intelligent voice assistant navigate an interactive voice response system to reach a representative. The system and method also include using the intelligent voice assistant to reconnect a user with a representative after an interrupted call.

A system and method for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party includes obtaining a dedicated phone number and creating a user account for the user and assigning the dedicated phone number to the user account. A provider account is created for a digital assistant using the dedicated phone number and the digital assistant is preprogrammed with the user account. The digital assistant is also preprogrammed with a skill for recognizing a specific utterance (e.g. Call). Connectivity is provided between the digital assistant and the Internet, for example, using a wireless access point. The digital assistant listens for the specific utterance and, upon recognizing the specific utterance followed by an identification of the called party, the digital assistant initiates a voice call through the Internet to the called party.

A system and method for controlling the content of a user device in response to an audible request is disclosed. The system and method include an intelligent voice assistant that can control viewable content of the user device in response to a user's request. The system and method can also be used to sync content between a user and a service representative when either the user or service representative make an audible request to sync content.

A system for providing help includes a digital assistant and a network for connecting the digital assistants to a server. A plurality of agent computers is connected to the server. The digital assistant is preprogrammed and centrally managed with at least one skill for recognizing a preprogrammed specific utterance followed by a request for help. After the preprogrammed specific utterance and request for help is detected by the digital assistant, the digital assistant initiates a request for help to the server and upon receiving the request for the help, the server assigns one of the agent computers and presents medical information regarding the user at the agent computer for better determining the type of help needed.

A system, method and computer-readable storage device are disclosed signing a voicemail and confirming an identity of the speaker. A method includes receiving a request to verify a speaker associated with a communication to a recipient, receiving first data from the speaker in connection with the communication, accessing second data associated with the speaker to verify the speaker, determining whether a match exists between the first data and the second data to yield a determination, retrieving a communication address of the recipient, generating a notification for the recipient, wherein the notification reports on the determination and transmitting the notification to the recipient at the communication address.

A communication terminal for Internet telephony is provided that handles and control communication of data in accordance with a standardized network protocol and exchanges data with a connecting unit connected to the Internet where the resulting data exchanged between the terminal and a connecting unit consist of packets in a standardized protocol data packet format embedded in a wireless format. This provides a communications terminal which uses a network or the Internet for the transfer of digitized speech, etc., thereby achieving great economic savings. Also, the flexibility is increased with respect to wireless communication with the network or the Internet without any need for specialized equipment and functionality.

A communications system embodiment including an input device reactive to user input, circuitry, an output device, and an electronic device communicatively connected to the input device and/or the output device is provided. A tangible non-transitory computer readable medium having program instructions executed by a processor for determining a preselected public or private mode, determining a preselected type of communication for receipt, and filtering the communication based on the mode selected and the type of communication selected as well as whether the sender is on a particular contact list. The communications system embodiment may provide for responding to the incoming communication by speech response or via an input device or an output device, to reduce or eliminate the need for a user of the system to view the electronic device or contact the electronic device to receive or send communications, in some embodiments.

Methods and systems for identifying and displaying present contacts associated with a device's group account are described herein. In some embodiments, a contact list associated with a requesting device may be obtained, and group accounts, and in particular group accounts that have granted communications session privileges to the requesting device's group account, may be determined. Presence information associated with each of the group accounts may be determined so as to identify which of the group accounts are currently present (e.g., human presence has been detected proximate to a user's device). These group accounts may be aggregated together, and list metadata may be generated indicating which of the contacts are present, and which are not. The list metadata, as well as list data representing the contact list, may then be provided to the requesting device.

A method is implemented at an electronic device for visually indicating a voice processing state. The electronic device includes an array of visual indicators and one or more microphones. The electronic device collects via the one or more microphones audio inputs from an environment in proximity to the electronic device and initializes processing of the audio inputs. A state of the processing is then determined from among a plurality of predefined voice processing states, and for each of the visual indicators, a respective predetermined illumination specification is determined in association with the determined voice processing state. In accordance with the identified illumination specifications of the visual indicators, the electronic device synchronizes illumination of the array of visual indicators to provide a visual pattern indicating the determined voice processing state. The visual pattern is displayed on the surface of the electronic device and includes one or more discrete illumination elements.

A method for quickly starting an application service, and a terminal. The method includes acquiring, by a terminal, event trigger information; starting, by the terminal, the application service software after determining that the event trigger information meets a preset quick startup condition; and acquiring, by the terminal, a voice instruction input by a user, and running the application service software according to the voice instruction. According to the method provided in the embodiments of the present disclosure, application service software is started by using event trigger information, so that a background of a terminal starts to perform recording only after the application service software is started, and background recording is stopped after the terminal provides an application service for a user, preventing a recording device in the background of the terminal from being always in a recording state, and further reducing power consumption of the terminal.