Aug 24, 2020
Jeanine Heck is vice president of AI product at Comcast, the top cable television provider in the U.S. with over 20 million subscribers for its Xfinity service. The company began shipping a voice-interactive TV remote app in 2013 and a voice-controlled physical remote for its cable boxes in 2015. In 2019, the Xfinity voice remote handled over 12 billion voice requests which suggests users are making an average of about 600 voice requests per year, up from about 200 three years ago. It is a heavily used custom assistant that has been proven at scale.
Heck joined Comcast in 2007 and has overseen the Xfinity voice remote project since its inception in 2013. Earlier in her career, she was a programmer and then manager at Gemini systems. Heck earned a degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia.