Fonix lets gamers command AI with voice

It's common for video gamers to mutter or yell at their game screens, but more and more, those words are actually helping them play.

Thanks in part to Sandy-based Fonix Speech Inc., gamers can tell their characters what to do rather than machine-gunning their fingers to nubs on the controller buttons.

"Go! Go! Go!" Fonix Speech's IT manager, Joe Shepherd, chimed into a microphone during a demonstration on Monday, and a moment later the characters in his attack group went, went, went. They also followed other commands without question: "Assault!" "Infiltrate!" "Hold position!"

With already more than two dozen game titles using Fonix' VoiceIn technology, the company is awaiting the pending launch of "Tom Clancy's EndWar," which is expected to have a command vocabulary topping any of its previous games, the best of which have a vocabulary of about 70 commands.