I'm all in with Apple products but nobody can say that Siri is any good, especially not with a straight face. The reason I went for the Echo over the HomePod is because how awful Siri is on my phone. It's pretty indefensible that such a big company can neglect a project so badly, when clearly it is the future - AI.
The team in charge of AI at Apple need firing and starting again, its no surprise that Project Titan looks like its going down the pan when the AI in Siri is awful, how the hell do you expect it to drive a car and not kill people!
My biggest peeve? When I have my iPhone connected to my CarPlay unit, and ask Siri to play a song or artist that's on my phone, and Siri can't do a thing because it isn't connected to the Internet.
Strange I loaded a load of albums onto my iPhone and Siri and CarPlay access them without issue. I have a Wireless Carplay so this over Bluetooth. Are you sure your music is physically on the phone ... as in you dragged them there in iTunes from your Library onto the iPhone icon?
So on Saturday I was asking stupid SIRI for directions. I am in Toronto, it’s only the 4th largest city in North America. So first street , dumbass gave me directions to somewhere in Mexico. Second try at another street was a US option. Real smooth. It sucks!
The hardest job though will be overcoming the meme of how bad Siri is. Siri has actually gotten a lot better over the last couple of years, but you wouldn't know it from what people say, the jokes they make, the screen shots that float around. Yes Siri could improve, but it isn't the embarrassment that it was at first. But to look at social media you'd think Apple hadn't spent a dime or a minute working on it in the last seven years. The hardest part will be changing the popular IMPRESSION of Siri. Unless that happens, Siri could be correct 100% of the time and to still wouldn't get any respect. It's happened before. On the Newton the handwriting recognition was lousy at first and that become the running jhoke. By the time the Newton was dropped though, it was actually quite good, far ahead of Palm or anyone else. But nobody remembers that. I fear Siri may have the same fate.
My biggest peeve? When I have my iPhone connected to my CarPlay unit, and ask Siri to play a song or artist that's on my phone, and Siri can't do a thing because it isn't connected to the Internet.
Ir isn’t that the phone isn’t connected to the internet, but that Siri preferences to Apple Music rather than your music library. That is what I find annoying. I can’t use my phone for Apple Music on LTE, because work pays for the service. So I have a lot of music downloaded on it. Siri has trouble finding that.
You know you can say, "Hey Siri, play XXX from my music." and it will only play music from your library rather than Apple Music?
The way the article is written is confusing some readers obviously based on the comments thus far. This is not an engineering position; it's a marketing position. The person is supposed to work with social media to see what folks are saying and communicate that back to others so they have that input and so they can coordinate marketing messages.
Also, the article skims over the entire comparative capability question and merely repeats an internet meme about Siri being behind. In truth, the situation is much more positive. I am a heavy user of Siri, and have family members who have Alexa and Google in their homes. ALL three have a long way to go, but in contrast to the author's comment, recent tests have shown Siri to be ahead of Alexa and getting close to Google in terms of accuracy.
As far as "skills" that is true in absolute numbers, but it is misleading. Yes, people have written thousands of "skills" for Alexa, but surveys show most people haven't used a single one of them. In contrast, surveys show that Siri does pretty much everything most people use their smart assistants for, as does Alexa and Google. Yes, someone has written a skill for Alexa so she can fart on command, but it turns out people use things like smart speakers to: play music and podcasts (#1 reason), check weather and traffic, check and send messages, make and listen to phone calls, set timers and alarms, and control their home automated devices. ( Believe me, Siri on the Homepod's audio quality and listening ability in noise, blows away the low quality Amazon and Google products)
Again, Siri is still in the infant stage, but so are the others, and it will be great to see what Apple does with their acquisitions like Vocal IQ, but in the meantime, Siri is the most used digital assistant in the world, and knows more languages by far, and what is glossed over by almost all writers is that you aren't sacrificing your privacy to use Siri.
Exactly. And “sentiment analysis” does not mean Siri will analyse your “sentiments”. This is the sentiments of Facebook and Twitter crowds they are talking about. The software mentioned are media analysis tools, not ML of AI or anything related to those.
The role is clearly to address the huge, widening gap between Siri’s capability and the public perception of Siri’s capability. I assume this is more to drive corrective education/marketing than product design.
There are several things that could change to help Siri; when a users asks HomePod a ridiculous question which is outside of product category, rather than saying ‘I can’t do that’ it should remind the user that it’s the wrong device and maybe push the answer to the nearest appropriate device with the same AppleID associated.
Siri’s Loup Ventures test scores are the highest in the relevant categories for HomePod for example but with no education the product is wide open to counter-marketing.
The fix for Siri is so easy that it's ridiculous Apple hasn't done this. They simply need a person dedicated to testing Siri and banging on the engineers to immediately fix all problems they find. SIRIously, that's it. For example, I should be that person. The first thing I'd fix, which I've even written to Tim Cook about, is the fact stupid Siri cannot even pronounce my daughter's name correctly. Yes, we've "trained" SIRI but she stupidly forgets her training, which means it is no training at all. And that itself is a problem that needs to be fixed, along with proper name pronunciations in accordance with spellings and individual people in a given family. SIRI also needs to be contextually aware, which for the most part, she is not now. When you are talking to SIRI about a given topic, she must retain knowledge of the entire conversation and not merely look at each sentence individually like a fenced garden. This is a big part of what makes SIRI so stupid.
Why hire someone to tell them what is already known? SIRI is a mess. I just finished converting ALL OF MY SMART HOME DEVICES from siri to ALEXA. The only thing siri does better than ALEXA is hear when there is a fair amount of ambient noise like the television.
Bezos is laughing his ass off right now as you chose to give him all your data.
Funny how Apple haters fail to mention security and privacy when comparing to wannabes.
Siri’s short comings have nothing to do with security or privacy.
This is really pretty stupid. 1) Have Siri recognize the voice that is asking information of it. 2) use that voice to determine which device will be used / queried for information 3) Allow multi queries without the repeated "hey Siri". Answer questions with answers not web site lookups. Start there and you are on your way to a winner.
Heck, I'd be happy if Siri simply worked - at least for simple things - when there's no network! Siri is absolutely *useless* with AirPods when there's no network. Was recently in China without a data plan and walking for a few miles, listening to music [stored on my iPhone!]. Simple things like "Skip" or "increase volume" were met with Siri telling me that it can't do this as there seem to be some network connection issues.
The funny thing is that this isn't even consistent. I could have sworn that on a previous walk down the same road, Siri did act on those same commands - and I definitely did not have cellular data enabled on either occasion.
Good that you pointed this out. I do believe Apple
So on Saturday I was asking stupid SIRI for directions. I am in Toronto, it’s only the 4th largest city in North America. So first street , dumbass gave me directions to somewhere in Mexico. Second try at another street was a US option. Real smooth. It sucks!
I'd be curious to know exactly how you phrased the question. Most time I see complaints in these forums about Siri's failings, it's literally because people are asking questions in a convoluted way that confuses Siri. I get better results from Siri the more I practice to say things correctly and be aware of its abilities and limitations with phrasing.
So on Saturday I was asking stupid SIRI for directions. I am in Toronto, it’s only the 4th largest city in North America. So first street , dumbass gave me directions to somewhere in Mexico. Second try at another street was a US option. Real smooth. It sucks!
I'd be curious to know exactly how you phrased the question. Most time I see complaints in these forums about Siri's failings, it's literally because people are asking questions in a convoluted way that confuses Siri. I get better results from Siri the more I practice to say things correctly and be aware of its abilities and limitations with phrasing.
That and when people say they have issues with Siri getting directions it’s likely a problem with Maps just being passed through Siri. If Siri gets bad info from Maps it isn’t the fault of Siri, it’s the fault of Maps.
So on Saturday I was asking stupid SIRI for directions. I am in Toronto, it’s only the 4th largest city in North America. So first street , dumbass gave me directions to somewhere in Mexico. Second try at another street was a US option. Real smooth. It sucks!
I'd be curious to know exactly how you phrased the question. Most time I see complaints in these forums about Siri's failings, it's literally because people are asking questions in a convoluted way that confuses Siri. I get better results from Siri the more I practice to say things correctly and be aware of its abilities and limitations with phrasing.
Standing in downtown Vancouver I asked for walking directions to 1234 Whatever Street and got a map to somewhere 2500 miles away. It turns out the address I wanted was on Whatever Drive, not Whatever Street. The AI is apparently not I enough to figure out I probably want the close but not exact address or that a 2.5 kilomile walk seemed odd.
So on Saturday I was asking stupid SIRI for directions. I am in Toronto, it’s only the 4th largest city in North America. So first street , dumbass gave me directions to somewhere in Mexico. Second try at another street was a US option. Real smooth. It sucks!
I'd be curious to know exactly how you phrased the question. Most time I see complaints in these forums about Siri's failings, it's literally because people are asking questions in a convoluted way that confuses Siri. I get better results from Siri the more I practice to say things correctly and be aware of its abilities and limitations with phrasing.
Standing in downtown Vancouver I asked for walking directions to 1234 Whatever Street and got a map to somewhere 2500 miles away. It turns out the address I wanted was on Whatever Drive, not Whatever Street. The AI is apparently not I enough to figure out I probably want the close but not exact address or that a 2.5 kilomile walk seemed odd.
Was it Street vs Drive that caused the issue?
I've found issues with certain things before, like asking 2200 2nd Ave as "twenty two hundred second ave" would get transformed into 22 102nd Ave" unless I asked as "two two zero zero". It happens.
I have searched for stuff and gotten things thousands of miles away, and not sure why that is. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I've seen people post really convoluted commands to do with setting meetings or appointments when asking in a simpler fashion would render the correct result. Just saying, sometimes it IS user error and understanding what abilities and limitations you're working with.
Siri is the weak sister of the three digital assistants. There's little uniformity among devices and she's a little schizo.
She often gets caught in a Schultz Causality loop where she hears nothing, sees nothing, knows nothing, and does nothing.
She'll go for several days doing simple HomeKit jobs fine, then suddenly she goes dumb. And she fights with her phone and HomePod selves to respond to a command, and often just give up and neither device obeys an order.
I'd dump both Siri and Alexa for Her in a heartbeat. But Her would only leave me eventually.
I've found issues with certain things before, like asking 2200 2nd Ave as "twenty two hundred second ave" would get transformed into 22 102nd Ave" unless I asked as "two two zero zero". It happens.
Excellent point. A common one around here is speaking a telephone number as "six oh four" instead of "six zero four." I haven't checked to see if Siri understands the former, but I don't want to try right now because it's 4 o'clock in the morning and I don't want to deal with the consequences if the call actually goes through!
I use the approach you describe, speaking individual digits. Even that can present a challenge to ANY of the voice systems though, as you illustrate in your example. If I say "two two zero zero, one zero two avenue" it could easily be interpreted as 220010 - 2nd Ave.
I also wonder if the particular device used affects how well Siri behaves. Until recently I had an iPhone 6 Plus. Siri was so slow to respond that I would often think my request hadn't gone through and would confuse Siri by repeating the request while the first one was still being processed. On the upside, the words I spoke were usually transcribed correctly. I now have an XS Max. It responds to Siri requests much more quickly, but it's almost impossible to get it to understand what I'm saying when using it in the car. I assume that's down to the noisy environment, but it's odd that the 6 Plus was able to understand me in the same car.
lorin schultz said: It responds to Siri requests much more quickly, but it's almost impossible to get it to understand what I'm saying when using it in the car. I assume that's down to the noisy environment, but it's odd that the 6 Plus was able to understand me in the same car.
My wife's car has CarPlay (wired) and Siri works great on my Xs. But in my car I have to connect over Bluetooth and Siri can't seem to hear me properly quite often AND Siri's voice has poor sound quality (similar to how Siri sounds through my AirPods). It's clearly using the car's microphone for my requests as it works the same whether the phone is sitting on the console beside me, in my pocket or in my gym bag in the back seat. Any chance it has anything to do with the position/placement of your phone?
This is really pretty stupid. 1) Have Siri recognize the voice that is asking information of it. 2) use that voice to determine which device will be used / queried for information 3) Allow multi queries without the repeated "hey Siri". Answer questions with answers not web site lookups. Start there and you are on your way to a winner.
You have got to be kidding. The real problem is Siri is too restricted and closed off for developers. Developers first of all can only make Siri apps that support a limited number of categories or genre's that Apple supports. The competition have no such restrictions.
Second, Siri and SiriKit are locked down to using only iOS supported hardware. The competition allow you to make and develop third party Hardware using almost any platform or hardware. Even Raspberry Pi's or other SBCs, including inexpensive ESP32's can be used.
That brings us to problem number three, the competition allow developer's to extend their respective AI voice assistants in the backend, or server side. Apple and their Siri doesn't allow any of that. This also means that both Alexa and Google Assistant are not tied to any hardware, or platform. So developers voice apps can work on any hardware, or platform. That ultimately means you can make one voice app that works on a $25 smart speaker, or a $500 smart speaker.
But it doesn't end their, the competition now have moved onto, and now support smart displays, as well as smart speakers. So that leads us to problem number four. Apple is no where to be found when it comes to smart displays, and has nothing to combat these new smart displays. So now the competition developers can create one app that supports voice only smart speakers, or both smart displays and smart speakers.
Problem number five, there is no way on this planet that Apple themselves could make all the necessary voice apps, that the competition have currently made, or is allowed to make. Plus Apple can't make or support all the hardware that the competition has made, or third parties have made. Not to mention Siri and SiriKit are definitely not conducive to its future growth, unless Apple opens Siri up. With all the restrictions in place, developers can easily see that the grass is most definitely greener on the other side of the fence. It's why we are starting to see the competition AI voice assistants moving into businesses nowadays, and at far cheaper prices that Apple could ever dream of making or supporting. Plus they do more than what Siri can actually do today. Mark my words, if Apple doesn't open up Siri, then Siri will only stay on iOS devices, that are not inexpensive. This ultimately means Siri will not be competing with the Alexa or Google Assistant in the business sector. Mark my words.
Comments
There are several things that could change to help Siri; when a users asks HomePod a ridiculous question which is outside of product category, rather than saying ‘I can’t do that’ it should remind the user that it’s the wrong device and maybe push the answer to the nearest appropriate device with the same AppleID associated.
Siri’s Loup Ventures test scores are the highest in the relevant categories for HomePod for example but with no education the product is wide open to counter-marketing.
I've found issues with certain things before, like asking 2200 2nd Ave as "twenty two hundred second ave" would get transformed into 22 102nd Ave" unless I asked as "two two zero zero". It happens.
I have searched for stuff and gotten things thousands of miles away, and not sure why that is. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I've seen people post really convoluted commands to do with setting meetings or appointments when asking in a simpler fashion would render the correct result. Just saying, sometimes it IS user error and understanding what abilities and limitations you're working with.
She often gets caught in a Schultz Causality loop where she hears nothing, sees nothing, knows nothing, and does nothing.
She'll go for several days doing simple HomeKit jobs fine, then suddenly she goes dumb. And she fights with her phone and HomePod selves to respond to a command, and often just give up and neither device obeys an order.
I'd dump both Siri and Alexa for Her in a heartbeat. But Her would only leave me eventually.
Excellent point. A common one around here is speaking a telephone number as "six oh four" instead of "six zero four." I haven't checked to see if Siri understands the former, but I don't want to try right now because it's 4 o'clock in the morning and I don't want to deal with the consequences if the call actually goes through!
I use the approach you describe, speaking individual digits. Even that can present a challenge to ANY of the voice systems though, as you illustrate in your example. If I say "two two zero zero, one zero two avenue" it could easily be interpreted as 220010 - 2nd Ave.
I also wonder if the particular device used affects how well Siri behaves. Until recently I had an iPhone 6 Plus. Siri was so slow to respond that I would often think my request hadn't gone through and would confuse Siri by repeating the request while the first one was still being processed. On the upside, the words I spoke were usually transcribed correctly. I now have an XS Max. It responds to Siri requests much more quickly, but it's almost impossible to get it to understand what I'm saying when using it in the car. I assume that's down to the noisy environment, but it's odd that the 6 Plus was able to understand me in the same car.
Second, Siri and SiriKit are locked down to using only iOS supported hardware. The competition allow you to make and develop third party Hardware using almost any platform or hardware. Even Raspberry Pi's or other SBCs, including inexpensive ESP32's can be used.
That brings us to problem number three, the competition allow developer's to extend their respective AI voice assistants in the backend, or server side. Apple and their Siri doesn't allow any of that. This also means that both Alexa and Google Assistant are not tied to any hardware, or platform. So developers voice apps can work on any hardware, or platform. That ultimately means you can make one voice app that works on a $25 smart speaker, or a $500 smart speaker.
But it doesn't end their, the competition now have moved onto, and now support smart displays, as well as smart speakers. So that leads us to problem number four. Apple is no where to be found when it comes to smart displays, and has nothing to combat these new smart displays. So now the competition developers can create one app that supports voice only smart speakers, or both smart displays and smart speakers.
Problem number five, there is no way on this planet that Apple themselves could make all the necessary voice apps, that the competition have currently made, or is allowed to make. Plus Apple can't make or support all the hardware that the competition has made, or third parties have made. Not to mention Siri and SiriKit are definitely not conducive to its future growth, unless Apple opens Siri up. With all the restrictions in place, developers can easily see that the grass is most definitely greener on the other side of the fence. It's why we are starting to see the competition AI voice assistants moving into businesses nowadays, and at far cheaper prices that Apple could ever dream of making or supporting. Plus they do more than what Siri can actually do today. Mark my words, if Apple doesn't open up Siri, then Siri will only stay on iOS devices, that are not inexpensive. This ultimately means Siri will not be competing with the Alexa or Google Assistant in the business sector. Mark my words.