NEW YORK — From animal GPS trackers to solar powered air conditioners and cellphone chargers, Inventor Simon Wilby has created some of the most creative and compelling inventions ever. However, his newest invention, 1Voice.AI, appears to be his proudest concept to date. 1Voice.AI will allow real time translation during phone conversations, without an interpreter, literally eliminating the middleman. 42 translatable languages at your disposal, all at the palm of your hand. The savvy inventor created this brilliant form of communication to destroy any language barrier that could potentially hinder or prolong how the world interacts abroad.
Wilby opens up to Zenger News about how his innovative mind works, talks about some of his inventions, and much more.
Zenger: What makes an inventor tick?
Wilby: Heaven sent. You just don’t wake up in the morning and go, I’m going to be an inventor, and then all of a sudden you train your mind to an inventor mind. I believe it’s heaven sent.
Zenger: You new invention sounds amazing. Tell us about 1Voice.AI.
Wilby: Right now, Percy as you know, you have the AI race. You got Amazon, Elon Musk getting into the race now. All of these tech companies on the lefthand side trying to be the big boys. It’s Google 3.0. What you put into an AI is what you get out of it. If it’s not already in the AI, it’s not going to give you what AI is. I said, you know what I’m going to do, people are forgetting about the world now. People are forgetting about communication. I wanted to make sure I could drop the language barrier worldwide, so I could create a system that everybody could use and talk to anyone in the world.
I wanted to have a telecommunication system with real time translation built into it. I wanted to build it so simple… a lot of people worry about electronics. If I hit this button what’s going to happen? They are nervous, so I wanted to build it on layman’s term, and I use that term respectfully, so an elderly person could use it. I always say, what’s on the tin is what you get. You go to the grocery store, and you look for baked beans. You go down the aisle and you get baked beans, you open the tin, and what’s inside, baked beans. I wanted a name in the industry that resonates. A lot of companies build names that they gotta market a name. Look at Elon Musk coming with Kronk. Some weird name, but people don’t know what that is until you start branding the name. My name is 1Voice. It’s simplistic. My mother named me Simon for a reason, to keep it simple, Percy. Keep it simple Simon. 1Voice.AI.
I built a telecommunication system and its beta version right now, so you go to your browser, you sign in with your Gmail account, it comes to a dial pad, and you dial anywhere in the world… let’s say you call China. You call over to China, no matter what phone they pick up on, landline or cellphone, they don’t need a program on their end or nothing, simply answer the phone, you speak English, they receive it in Chinese. They speak Chinese, you receive it in English. Real time translation. I’ve done this in 42 languages, sir. I promise you this, no one on the planet has done this. But there will be copycats coming out quickly.
Zenger: How do you combat copycats?
Wilby: I’ve added voice match. In about 3 weeks we will have voice match. So, let’s say this, Percy is on 1Voice, we send you a script and you read it, it goes into your profile account, when Percy makes a phone call, you call someone in Italy, they pick up the phone and Percy’s speaking English on this end, and when they listen on their end in Italian, it’s Percy speaking Italian in his voice to the person he just called.
Zenger: Wow!
Wilby: Believe me, sir, it works. What I wanted to differentiate from copycats, I wanted to put a theme song to 1Voice.AI. Coca Cola came out with a song for their brand. So, what I done was this, I said, I’m going to find a top producer in the world, and I found a guy called Stuart Epps. He worked with The Beatles and all the top people around the world. He’s in England. I pitched a deal to him and told him what I wanted. We are getting together in the next week or so, and 1Voice, the actual theme song is coming out. We got a song related to the brand, so when the copycats come in after us, they’re going to try and copy us, but people will know it’s not 1Voice because we have a song in there. That was my theory behind it.
Zenger: Where does 1Voice.AI rank amongst your other inventions?
Wilby: That’s a good question, sir. I’m the first guy that built real time GPS tracking for pets. That was good back in the day. I didn’t want to lose my dog because they’re my children, right. We have 18 free satellites in the skies in the heavens, not many people know about that. Different governments have these floating around satellites and they’re free. You tap into them. I use the satellite to put a GPS tracking on my pet. That was kick ass.
Then I started doing solar energy. I went to Barbados one day. I spanned the globe, put my finger on it and the nearest point was an island called Barbados. I started going there and talking to some senators and met the Prime Minister. I asked, “Why do you have solar energy down here?” From there it blossomed. I created an air conditioner unit for solar energy. I was giving it away to the locals. It’s not about money with me, sir. It’s about helping other people. We come into this world with nothing, and we leave with nothing. We can leave something. It’s not about, look at my jet, my house, and my car. I don’t care about that. I’ll live in a tent or a treehouse if I have to. I’ve always fancied doing that. But helping a little old lady in Barbados, it’s really hot and humid there. And the electricity bills down there, not many can afford because they run off fossil fuel. They power the generators with fossil fuels, and I said, God gave us the beautiful sun, why don’t we capture that energy, bring it down… I got this air conditioning unit, I cut off the power, I got 2 panels, got an inverter with some batteries and it worked. I packaged those up and went around the island and giving them to people on the island.
Then it got really ugly down there. When you tap into people’s bottom line, they don’t like you. It got controversial down there. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it got crazy. Then I started doing streetlamps. At night on the island, it’s pitch black over the ocean. You can put streetlamps anywhere, get the sun to charge it through the day and at night you’ll have full energy. I have that deal. It was crazy. It was powerful and then it got really bad. I had to get off the island or they were going to take me out. People like me, either they try to buy you, partner with you, or take you out. To answer your question 1Voice is the biggest thing I’ve done.
Zenger: Will there be any additional settings to 1Voice?
Wilby: We have 1Video. It will be like Zoom but with full translations with 10 participants. You’re talking English, but you have 9 other countries and you’re all on this video conference call and you speak English, and it goes into the 9 other languages. We got that coming out in 4 weeks.
Zenger: How do you determine what form of technology you want to tap into? For instance, streaming music, what makes you say, No… not that, but this solar power thing, international interpreter-less communication interests me.
Wilby: I love you! I’m going to give you a virtual hug. Ready, high five, boom! You’re awesome. That’s a great question. I wish all reporters were like you. Most people, like Elon Musk gotta steal other people’s ideas to put their narcissism over the top. Who in their right mind would buy a social network for $44 billion and kill the brand and call it “X?” Nobody knows what “X” is now. They think they are trendsetters. Mark Zuckerberg, R2D2… “My name is Mark Zuckerberg and I’m going to do the virtual reality…” Come on, dude. People are not interested in that.
You look at people from the 80’s and the 90’s and they gotta get on the bandwagon with technology. My choice is this, that’s a beautiful question, I look at telecommunications, that’s one, I look at communications, which is two, and the other one is entertainment. Imagine you’re a sports person and you’re following the World Cup, and you’re like, there’s Germany, Portuguese, and Italy playing. You tune in, you get the show, but they’re speaking a language you can’t follow. Imagine this, you stop it, you hit English, and everything is in your language. I’m getting into the music and television side of things, which all falls under entertainment. Entertainment and communication is how I decide.