Better incarnation of Siri may appear alongside Apple's 2017 iPhones - report
Apple's 2017 iPhone models will likely ship with an enhanced version of Siri, reflecting growing competition in the AI assistant space, a report said on Tuesday.
The exact features Apple has planned are unknown, though the company did buy machine learning startup Turi in August, DigiTimes noted, citing market sources for the iPhone plans. In fact Apple has bought other companies that could aid Siri as well, such as another machine learning startup, Perceptio, and language processing outfit VocalIQ.
Apple may be facing an uphill battle with Siri, which is often considered weaker next to Google Assistant -- found on Pixel phones and the Google Home -- or Amazon's Alexa, which was born on Echo speakers but is coming to an increasing number of first- and third-party devices. Huawei is using Alexa on its Mate 9 phone for instance, and the DigiTimes sources indicated that LG's G6 will follow suit, though LG is also said to be talking about using Google AI on devices.
Samsung, meanwhile, is heading in its own direction with Bixby, which could debut alongside the Galaxy S8. The assistant is believed to use work from Viv Labs, a firm Samsung acquired in October that was created by former Apple employees and Siri co-founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Chris Bringham.
Viv's technology has been described as superior to Siri, for instance better integrating with third-party services.
Siri has been criticized in general for limited functions, often misunderstanding requests, and lacking the ability to answer contextual questions. Google Assistant for example can answer both "who is the U.S. President" and "how old is he," recognizing that the second question is related to the first.
Any Siri improvements would presumably be tied to iOS 11, which should be announced at June's Worldwide Developers Conference and launched in the fall, if Apple follows traditional schedules. The company is thought to be working on three new iPhones for the fall, including two modest "iPhone 7s" upgrades and a flagship "iPhone X," possibly using a 5.8-inch curved OLED display made by Samsung.
A better Siri could make an appearance on Apple's rumored Echo competitor, which might also include facial recognition sensors to identify users.
The exact features Apple has planned are unknown, though the company did buy machine learning startup Turi in August, DigiTimes noted, citing market sources for the iPhone plans. In fact Apple has bought other companies that could aid Siri as well, such as another machine learning startup, Perceptio, and language processing outfit VocalIQ.
Apple may be facing an uphill battle with Siri, which is often considered weaker next to Google Assistant -- found on Pixel phones and the Google Home -- or Amazon's Alexa, which was born on Echo speakers but is coming to an increasing number of first- and third-party devices. Huawei is using Alexa on its Mate 9 phone for instance, and the DigiTimes sources indicated that LG's G6 will follow suit, though LG is also said to be talking about using Google AI on devices.
Samsung, meanwhile, is heading in its own direction with Bixby, which could debut alongside the Galaxy S8. The assistant is believed to use work from Viv Labs, a firm Samsung acquired in October that was created by former Apple employees and Siri co-founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Chris Bringham.
Viv's technology has been described as superior to Siri, for instance better integrating with third-party services.
Siri has been criticized in general for limited functions, often misunderstanding requests, and lacking the ability to answer contextual questions. Google Assistant for example can answer both "who is the U.S. President" and "how old is he," recognizing that the second question is related to the first.
Any Siri improvements would presumably be tied to iOS 11, which should be announced at June's Worldwide Developers Conference and launched in the fall, if Apple follows traditional schedules. The company is thought to be working on three new iPhones for the fall, including two modest "iPhone 7s" upgrades and a flagship "iPhone X," possibly using a 5.8-inch curved OLED display made by Samsung.
A better Siri could make an appearance on Apple's rumored Echo competitor, which might also include facial recognition sensors to identify users.
Comments
Example:
Me: "Alexa, play StarTalk Radio 24/7 on TuneIn."
Alexa: "You want to hear StarTalk Radio 24/7 on TuneIn, right?"
Me: "Yes."
Alexa: "I am unable to play StarTalk Radio 24/7 on TuneIn."
(Then why did you ask?!?!)
Me: "Alexa, StarTalk Radio on TuneIn."
Alexa: "Playing StarTalk Radio 24/7 on TuneIn".
(She honors my request seemingly with too little information.)
No sense in regurgitating talking points tho as we've already had this discussion.
EDIT: One big piece of advice I'd offer: If Google allowed wake phrases other than "OK Google" I totally believe the use of Google Now/Google Assistant would skyrocket. Apple should consider dumping the "OK Siri" requirement for that reason.
If Apple it stuck only improving Siri with hardware and major OS updates, it seems they are sort of self-limiting Siri's ability to keep up with the competition.
It will be vital for Apple Watch, home automation, cars, office automation. But usefulness in personal life beyond that will stay limited to places where you are alone or is quiet.
You can try yourself to dictate like you were making call. It is strange compare to normal phone call and you do not have visual control.
There's a critical point whereby Siri's lack of understanding means attempts to use her are actually slower than carrying out the command yourself due to having to rephrase or correct her voice recognition; or that she simply can't do what you're asking. If she understands less than the vast majority of the time, it's not worth using her at all. For some things I know Siri will definitely work for it's great, for anything slightly unusual - not so much.
As I've said before, it seems that Apple's entirely unable to work on more than one thing at once. They have a huge event where X is gonna be the next big thing, and then they abandon it for years. It's really weird and stops businesses using Apple stuff due to the unpredictability.
Haven't had one of these in a while. So effective and on point too.
Oh and in case it's not ridiculously obvious ... /s
AI assistants are great at accepting instructions, queries and providing short answers to specific questions or automating instructions, but they are private speech only in limited circumstances. Always on AI assistants, like Alexa, are not necessarily private, though they should be by default.
I'm not seeing what you are with AI assistants, but, perception bias and all that, my mileage varied.
You have a pretty cynical point of view, one which I don't experience or really think is as normal as you do. Others criticize apple for the very opposite -- saying "No" to too many things, and lament that they aren't doing more products ala "Tesla is so much further ahead than Apple!" (but...where can i buy a Tesla laptop?? so bizarre)
Apple introduced the whole digital-assistant-on-mobile-phone-OS movement w/ the first Siri. it's completely normal to expect them to continue working on it and making it better. i dont know what people want to do w/ Siri but using it for simple tasks is its job to be done for me -- texts, reminders, music, home automation... would i like a Star Trek-style assistant that could handle requests like "Computer, summarize the War of the Roses"? sure, but I'm not expecting it to drop anytime soon.
She then seemed to have some sort of seizure.
Seriously, she started speaking in tongues.
Looked at the phone's screen and she was reciting the xml stream she'd got back as the search result.
Bizarre, and must do better.
So it seems to me that any kind of machine-learning is either not working or not present at all up to now and every word Siri understands is punched in on a keyboard by some poor employee.