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LiveU Joins IBC Accelerator’s Smart Stories Consortium to Define an Open Standard for Story Context Interoperability

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LiveU connects live field acquisition to the Story Object Model, the open standard newsrooms are building so AI-enabled production tools work from one shared understanding of a story

HACKENSACK, N.J. , Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LiveU is participating in the IBC Accelerator Incubator 2026: Smart Stories – The New Knowledge Architecture for Content Production, an industry-wide initiative developing the Story Object Model (SOM), an open standard for structuring and sharing editorial story context across newsroom production systems. SOM creates one story that every tool works from – cutting time to air, giving every team a single view, and preventing errors caused by rewriting metadata between vendors.

This new consortium spans more than a dozen broadcasters, news organizations, standards bodies, and technology vendors, covering the full content chain from news gathering through to distribution. Champions include ITN, BBC, AP (Associated Press), Al Jazeera, Channel 4, Washington Post, BBC, ITV, Sky, EBU, NBCUniversal, Reuters, Scripps, and SMPTE. LiveU joins the project alongside technology participants including Google Cloud, Shure, Trint, Cognizant, EVS, CUEZ, Trint, AWS, Nuvelics, Electric Sheep, the Weather Company, Moments Lab, HyperContent AI, Octopus, Fonn Group and Vizrt.

A gap AI can’t close on its own

As content volume grows exponentially, broadcasters need better ways to discover and distribute it, and the ability to build one story into versions that span broadcast, social, and streaming. Today, producers hold that structure themselves, manually re-entering and aligning details. That slows production and raises the risk of error as stories advance toward air.

Smart Stories closes that gap with a new knowledge architecture for content production. MOS (Media Object Server), the broadcast industry’s long-standing operational standard, connects systems by moving data between them but is editorially blind. In contrast, SOM is designed to connect them editorially: it gives every tool in the chain a shared, structured description of what a story is, what has changed, and what matters. AI agents and production tools can act on that understanding without a producer relaying it by hand.

The Accelerator project also defines Skills, so editorial standards, compliance thresholds and house style stay encoded and owned by the newsroom.

LiveU’s role: a story-centric ingest workflow built around SOM

SOM extends LiveU’s story-centric automated ingest and acquisition workflow by adding another layer of interoperability to LiveU’s open EcoSystem. SOM enables editorial teams to share context in real time between vendors, leading to context-aware agentic workflows. LiveU Ingest today already shares live feeds and metadata with newsroom, editing, and distribution platforms outside LiveU.

“Live production has always depended on context traveling from the field into the newsroom and across every tool that touches a story,” said Roy Hasson, VP Product Marketing and SaaS Sales, LiveU. “For years, producers held that context in their heads, as AI agents take on more of the production workflow, they need that same context to work from. Smart Stories is the industry building the standard that makes story-centric workflows possible, so systems understand each other and agentic AI can support the editorial process. Our field-to-cloud technology powers that work today.”

One use case focuses on connecting acquisition units directly to the story. When a story breaks, LiveU suggests which unit to dispatch. That unit’s feed carries the story’s context into the cloud. Transcription and clip generation build on that context automatically. One person then confirms the story in a shared console.

Hasson continued, “We are committed to open industry standards, because they increase collaboration and interoperability between vendors across the production chain. That commitment shows up in LiveU’s active participation in initiatives like SOM, MXL, and TAMS – open projects that keep our IP-video EcoSystem connected to outside tools and platforms.”

Deliverables and live demo at IBC2026

The consortium will deliver three outputs before IBC2026 in Amsterdam, the Story Object Model specification, a Skills reference architecture and a live multi-vendor demonstration. The demonstration takes two forms: a filmed, end-to-end breaking-news pipeline, and a live event where a story changes mid-production, and every connected system responds in real time, with a human editor giving final sign-off. The consortium will also publish a three-tier integration guide, giving vendors a defined path to adopt SOM.

LiveU will join the consortium’s live showcase on Saturday, September 12th:

Smart Stories Incubator showcase: 4:00–5:00pm, Future Tech Stage, Hall 14Accelerator networking reception: 5:00–6:00pm, immediately following the showcase

Network Control: Your Connection, Your Choice

LiveU is also participating in this second IBC2026 Accelerator Project, using open 5G network APIs to turn 5G from best-effort connectivity into a programmable, predictable and reliable production resource.

Network Control: Your Connection, Your Choice unites the BBC, EBU, DAZN, France Télévisions, GSMA, RAI Italy, RTL Germany, TV2 Denmark, Vodafone and Telefónica as Champions, alongside LiveU, Neutral Wireless, Haivision, SliceFinity and Vonage as Participants, with the University of Strathclyde serving as Academic Partner. Together, the group explores how open network APIs can help applications with specialized requirements interact with standardized network capabilities designed to meet defined quality requirements, supporting reliable and business-critical media production workflows over 5G.

LiveU’s full IP-video EcoSystem will be on display at Stand 7.C24. To arrange a meeting or demonstration, visit https://get.liveu.tv/ibc-2026/

The IBC Accelerator Zone is located in Hall 14, D.25. The Accelerator PoC Showcases for the above projects will be on Saturday September 12th 16-17.00hrs (Smart Stories) and Sunday September 13th 11.30am-12.30pm (Network Control) on the Future Tech Stage, also in Hall 14.

About LiveU 

LiveU is the global leader in live IP-video solutions, transforming live video into real value. From breaking news and major sports events to enterprise communications and public safety, LiveU enables reliable and efficient live production and visual intelligence at scale. LiveU offers a comprehensive, modular IP-video EcoSystem spanning the entire live production workflow. Our solutions are powered by the resilient, low-latency LRT™ (LiveU Reliable Transport) protocol and further strengthened by LiveU IQ (LIQ™), which leverages AI–driven connectivity for optimal performance. With a strong focus on automation, LiveU reduces manual processes to help organizations deliver innovative, story-centric live productions – streamlining scheduling, content creation, ingest and orchestration. Supporting digital–first, hybrid and cloud–based workflows, LiveU provides flexible, scalable and future-proof solutions that support remote productions, on-premises/cloud integration, and multi-platform distribution. Actus Digital, a LiveU company, and the value leader in its space, combines quality assurance monitoring and compliance logging in a unified, affordable Actus X platform. Trusted by over 5,000 customers in more than 150 countries, LiveU is an American company, headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey, and a multi-award winner. For more information, visit www.liveu.tv, or follow us on X, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Instagram.

Press contacts:
Kate Ford (Int’l)
+44-7740 948065
kate@jumppr.tv

Joyce Essig (Americas)
201-906-9367
joyce@liveu.tv

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SOURCE LiveU

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Ally Waste Acquires Swift Integrated Services, Expanding Service Capabilities and Market Reach

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GILBERT, Ariz., Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ally Waste, a nationwide provider of comprehensive waste solutions for multifamily communities, announced today that it has acquired Swift Integrated Services, a Utah-based provider of dumpster management, doorstep trash pickup, and waste brokerage services.

“Every acquisition we make starts with the same question: Will it help us serve customers better? Swift expands our reach and brings capabilities that allow us to support more of our customers’ waste needs. We’re excited to welcome the Swift team to Ally and build on what they’ve created,” said James Crawley, CEO of Ally Waste.

The acquisition expands Ally Waste’s presence in Utah, Florida, and Idaho markets while strengthening the company’s waste stream optimization capabilities. It also brings waste brokerage capabilities to Ally, giving current customers another way to address their waste needs as the offering is integrated.

“Joining Ally gives us the opportunity to build on what we’ve created while bringing our customers the support and resources of a nationwide team,” said Indigo Schumann-Curtis, President of Swift Integrated Services. “Our customers can expect business as usual, with many of the same people continuing to support them. I’m excited about what our teams can accomplish together.”

Swift Integrated Services customers can expect continuity in both service and support throughout the transition. The Swift team will continue with Ally, bringing established customer relationships and deep market knowledge to the combined organization.

About Ally Waste

Ally Waste is a nationwide provider of comprehensive waste solutions for multifamily communities, including valet trash and recycling, bulk removal, and waste stream optimization services. Its technology gives owners and operators clear visibility into what they’re paying for waste across a portfolio, paired with on-the-ground teams who put those insights into action.

The company’s culture is grounded in its values of Integrity, Grit, and Humility. These principles drive Ally Waste’s commitment to supporting multifamily teams and delivering consistent, high-quality service that improves everyday life for residents and on-site staff. Learn more at www.allywaste.com.

Media Contact:
Doridé Uvaldo
duvaldo@allywaste.com

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SOURCE Ally Waste

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Gupshup Launches Self-Serve Voice AI Platform, Extending Conversational Engagement into Phone Calls

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Businesses can now build, test, and deploy AI voice agents across support, sales, and operations – alongside WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS – from a single platform

MUMBAI, India and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Gupshup launched its Voice AI Platform, a self-serve console for building and running AI voice agents that handle calls end to end. The launch extends Gupshup’s engagement platform from messaging into voice, bringing support, sales, and operations onto the same infrastructure businesses use for WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS.

Gupshup’s Voice AI Platform resolves support calls, qualifies and converts leads, and automates operational calls such as scheduling, verification, and payment reminders, so human teams can focus on conversations that require a person.

The platform covers agent lifecycle in a no-code, prompt-based interface. Businesses configure an agent’s voice, language, knowledge base, system prompt, and workflows, then connect it to tools their teams use. Before going live, teams define guardrails, run simulations, and validate behaviour with tests – comparing models. Once deployed, analytics track success rates, satisfaction, and language usage, with transcripts, conversation history, and debug logs for review.

Gupshup’s platform is the first to bring unique capabilities. First, voice is a channel extension of a platform serving businesses across WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS – enabling voice-and-messaging experiences within a customer journey. Second, it supports telephony: PSTN and WhatsApp voice channels, on-premise and cloud deployment, and the option to bring PSTN infrastructure. Third, it is model-flexible – businesses choose speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and LLM providers rather than accepting a stack.

The platform builds on Gupshup’s experience powering customer engagement for 50,000+ businesses across 100+ countries and 25+ industries, processing 10 billion interactions monthly, including 500 million voice calls per month.

The Voice AI Platform has been beta tested and delivered outcomes across deployments. Users receive 100 minutes of credits to test, and pricing starts at USD 0.035 (INR 3.50) per minute.

“For customer engagement in emerging markets, Voice AI drives universal access – reaching every user regardless of language or literacy. In developed markets, it drives efficiency and automation. In both, it delivers cost savings, revenue growth, and satisfaction. With the launch of its Voice AI Platform alongside its messaging, Gupshup offers the only unified self-serve platform for customer engagement across voice and messaging,” said Beerud Sheth, Co-founder and CEO, Gupshup.

The Voice AI Platform is available to businesses at voiceai.gupshup.io.

For more information, visit www.gupshup.ai.

 

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SOURCE Gupshup Technology India Pvt Ltd

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Deepdub Launches Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational: Multilingual Text-to-Speech Built to Survive Real Customers, Not Just Demos

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Enterprise-grade real-time text-to-speech delivers 150ms time to first audio at full 48 kHz, with text normalization that gets account numbers, invoice totals and appointment dates right

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Deepdub, a foundational voice AI company pioneering expressive voice technologies, announced today the launch of Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational, a new multilingual text-to-speech model with high-fidelity 48 kHz audio, improved text normalization and extended Hebrew support. The model is available to all Deepdub clients now.

For enterprises running voice agents, a call holds together when four things go right at once. The voice sounds like a person. The response arrives fast enough to feel like a conversation. The agent knows when to speak and when to listen. And every account number, date and amount comes out the way a customer would say it. When one of them slips, the call escalates to a human, and that is where containment and cost are decided. Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational is built for all four.

“Every voice model sounds impressive for two minutes in a demo. Very few survive two weeks with real customers,” said Ofir Krakowski, CEO and co-founder of Deepdub. “Deployments don’t stall on the 95% a model gets right, they stall on the misread account number, the mangled surname, the one wrong digit on a live call. We built this model for that last few percent, because in production, the last few percent is the whole product.”

In English, the work is in text normalization, the step that turns written text into spoken words. A delivery date written 2024-12-31 is read as December thirty first, twenty twenty-four rather than as a run of digits. An invoice total written $1,240 is read as one thousand two hundred forty dollars. An appointment at 14:30 is read as two thirty. A reference written Chapter VII is read as chapter seven rather than as letters. These are the categories where Deepdub’s testing puts the model ahead of the other systems it was measured against. An enterprise running more than one language gets one set of behavior to test and one contract to hold rather than two.

Phantom Z 3.4 delivers an end-to-end p95 time-to-first-audio of 150 milliseconds in real-time mode at full-range 48 kHz audio, with cross-language voice transfer from under three seconds of reference audio. Deepdub builds and trains its own speech models from random rather than licensing them, which allows the company to bring a new language into production in two weeks. Deepdub covers more than fifty locales and dialects verified by local voice and language experts, inside a platform supporting more than 50 locales and dialects.

“We run Deepdub in production for live, real-time phone calls, where latency and naturalness aren’t nice-to-haves but the key factor in whether a caller stays on the line. 3.4 is the closest we’ve heard a synthetic voice come to a real person, and our callers show it: they stay longer, talk more, and engage with our agents like we’ve never seen before,” said Adir Haziza, CTO at Voiceman.

The hardest case is Hebrew, which is written without vowels, so the same letters can spell different words. The three letters of שלט are a sign read one way and a remote control read another. A model that reads one word at a time has to guess which the sentence means, and in Hebrew a wrong guess is not an accent, it is a different word that stays invisible until a customer hears it. Phantom Z 3.4 resolves this at the source. Pronunciation is decided from the whole sentence rather than word by word, and every instance of שלט in Deepdub’s Hebrew test set was read correctly. Where a brand name or a plan tier has to be said a particular way, marking it in the text is enough. Deepdub ranks first for Hebrew text-to-speech on the public TTS Arena leaderboard hosted by ivrit.ai on Hugging Face.

In Hebrew, national ID numbers, appointment dates and transaction amounts are expanded before speech, so a balance written as 1,240 ₪ is spoken in full rather than read out as digits. In blind listening tests, Phantom Z 3.4 was preferred over Deepdub’s previous Hebrew model in 71 percent of decisive comparisons.

“We needed something that would hold up consistently across a large volume of work, so we tested it thoroughly before deciding. What stood out was that the details came out right and the Hebrew was the most natural we’d heard,” said Dor Levy, Head of Jeen Talk at Jeen AI.

About Deepdub
Deepdub is the foundational voice AI model company pioneering expressive voice technologies for global enterprises across TV, film, advertising, gaming, e-learning, and AI-agent applications. The company’s international team of technology, dubbing, and linguistic experts deliver an end-to-end voice solution that preserves the emotional and cultural integrity of original content in more than 50 locales and dialects. With an advisory board that includes media leaders such as Kevin Reilly, former Chief Content Officer at HBO Max, and Emiliano Calemzuk, former President of Fox Television Studios, Deepdub is eliminating language barriers to enable the global diffusion of media on major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Visit https://deepdub.ai or follow us on LinkedIn for more information.

Deepdub Media Contact
Zivit Katz
Deepdub
zivit.katz@deepdub.ai

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SOURCE Deepdub

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