Microsoft released three new models for building voice agents: a streaming transcription model that produces text in 100ms, and two text-to-speech models optimized for speed and cost. Together they're designed to handle the full loop of hearing, understanding, deciding, and speaking in real-time conversations.

• MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming ranks #1 for accuracy on Artificial Analysis and delivers partial transcripts in just over 100ms, letting voice agents start acting mid-sentence rather than waiting for speakers to finish.
• MAI-Voice-2.1-Flash generates 45 seconds of audio with 150ms end-to-end latency and costs 60% less than comparable models at $15 per 1M characters, making it practical for high-volume applications.
• Both voice models support 23 languages with a single voice maintaining native accents across all of them, plus voice cloning from a few seconds of audio with built-in consent guardrails against misuse.

SignalWire is a unified communications platform that lets developers build AI agents and call flows in code, with AI constrained by state machines rather than prompts. It's built on FreeSWITCH's media engine and handles state management, timing, and infrastructure so developers focus on product logic instead of managing event races and timing issues.

• State lives inside the call architecture, eliminating race conditions and scaling from 10 to 10,000 concurrent calls without architectural changes
• AI agents follow developer-defined code logic as state machines where the model only sees exposed tools and data at each step, preventing off-script behavior
• The platform owns the full stack from media engine to carrier layer, giving developers direct control over network behavior instead of wrapping a third-party service

Instinct, an AI assistant, is launching Instinct Concierge to handle tasks that require phone calls—like booking restaurants without online reservations or negotiating with service providers. The feature is rolling out to early access users now with broader availability coming later.

• The service handles high-touch tasks AI typically can't do alone, specifically phone calls to businesses that don't have digital booking systems
• Real-world use cases include restaurant reservations, dentist cancellations, and billing disputes
• Currently in limited early access with plans to expand