Growth of Apple's Siri hampered by privacy & departure of key staff - report
Apple's Siri is failing to keep up with rival assistants from Amazon and Google not just because of fences created by privacy, but because of related staff departures, according to several former members of the Siri team.
Apple's privacy policy is making it hard to evolve and personalize Siri, the ex-Apple sources told the Wall Street Journal. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant both take advantage of user data stored in the cloud, improving their adaptiveness.
It's frustration with this gap -- including slow support for third-party apps -- that has reportedly led to people leaving the Siri team, some of them for competitors. Perhaps the best known losses are Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus, who helped create the independent version of Siri that Apple bought and integrated into iOS. After later leaving Apple the pair founded Viv, which was in turn bought by Samsung and used as the basis for Bixby, an assistant found on the Galaxy S8 smartphone.
The Siri team is said to have first realized it was losing ground at a 2014 Amazon event showcasing the original Echo speaker. The device was not only able to play music, run Web searches, and order products from Amazon, but easily separate voices from background noise, and recognize people at a distance. Some of these features were clearly missing from Siri.
"People at Apple's anxiety level went up a notch," one ex-Siri team member said.
Apple did announce some Siri upgrades at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, such as live translations, contextual query comprehension, and user data sync across all of a person's Apple devices. Stealing the spotlight was the HomePod, a $349 smartspeaker with Siri built in, shipping in December. The product will offer high-end audio, and double as a HomeKit hub.
Apple's privacy policy is making it hard to evolve and personalize Siri, the ex-Apple sources told the Wall Street Journal. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant both take advantage of user data stored in the cloud, improving their adaptiveness.
It's frustration with this gap -- including slow support for third-party apps -- that has reportedly led to people leaving the Siri team, some of them for competitors. Perhaps the best known losses are Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus, who helped create the independent version of Siri that Apple bought and integrated into iOS. After later leaving Apple the pair founded Viv, which was in turn bought by Samsung and used as the basis for Bixby, an assistant found on the Galaxy S8 smartphone.
The Siri team is said to have first realized it was losing ground at a 2014 Amazon event showcasing the original Echo speaker. The device was not only able to play music, run Web searches, and order products from Amazon, but easily separate voices from background noise, and recognize people at a distance. Some of these features were clearly missing from Siri.
"People at Apple's anxiety level went up a notch," one ex-Siri team member said.
Apple did announce some Siri upgrades at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, such as live translations, contextual query comprehension, and user data sync across all of a person's Apple devices. Stealing the spotlight was the HomePod, a $349 smartspeaker with Siri built in, shipping in December. The product will offer high-end audio, and double as a HomeKit hub.
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Here's a recent thorough test of the big three against each other with a wide variety of tasks.
http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant-cortana-alexa-2016-11/#so-what-did-we-learn-here-46
To whet your appetite, here's from the author's summary of the face offI know,
"I know — there are a lot of embarrassing moments for Google up there. If I were to simply count each "winner" above, Siri would be right there with it. Things are closer than the recent Google hype machine would suggest."
I live near an Apple Store (now closed for remodeling), but it's a smaller store and they don't always have a good selection of product. To test Siri, I ask for directions to another SPECIFIC Apple Store (using the official name as shown on their website) and instead Siri responds with "There is a closer Apple Store, would you like directions to that store" (that's not a direct quote, but something similar and, of course, I say No and that's the end of it). That's insane... When asking for directions to a specific store, Siri should NOT respond in that manner (If I asked for the nearest Apple Store, yes, but not when I'm asking for directions to a store that has the product that my nearest store doesn't have).
Siri is great for setting timers from my watch, which is about the only thing I use Siri for these days...
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4078591-google-assistant-smarter-siri-cortana-alexa
Apple has intelligent voice tech that's years ahead of the copycats and Apple isn't using it. I was expecting a big reveal at WWDC but we only got the new Siri voice.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apples-vocaliq-ai-works-2016-5
Apple isn't boasting about privacy much either(which is why the new ad about privacy surprised me). I had an iKnockoff user tell me TouchID sends your fingerprint over the air. I told him about the secure enclave and the moron just laughed. Idiots aren't educated on these matters either.
This. And the article also ignores people Apple has recently hired. Like Russ Salakhutdinov from Carnegie Mellon (who made an interesting comment inviting other AI researchers to join his team, with a link to Apple job postings). Apple also recently acquired Perceptio, Turi and Tuplejump, and apparently have significantly expanded the offices in Seattle where Turi is based.
Clearly Apple is up to something, and we won't know what it is until they announce it.
The adults in the house have full control, kids - you can control music and these select homekit items, guests, you can turn on the lights in the bathroom.
Agree completely. I actively avoid anything Google. Not necessarily because of "privacy" per se.
It's because Google makes 97+% of their revenue by selling advertisements.
And the more info they can dig out of you, the more focused their ads can be.
And guess what.
I absolutely f*****g hate ads.