A new report by Business Insider has been released, and this one is definitely going to catch some attention. In the article, the publicist states that an accusation between Apple and U.K-based startup VocalIQ, Siri will be receiving an upgrade with new technology and capabilities which will be brought by the startup who has been working on new speech processing techniques for quite a while.
Business Insider quotes a source who is familiar with VocalIQ’s product and says that their software is much more complex than Siri, Cortana, Google Now, and even Amazon Alexa:
According to a source familiar with VocalIQ’s product, it’s much more robust and capable than Siri’s biggest competitors like Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. In fact, it was so impressive that Apple bought VocalIQ before the company could finish and release its smartphone app. After the acquisition, Apple kept most of the VocalIQ team and let them work out of their Cambridge office and integrate the product into Siri.
Apple was even more atrracted to aquire VocalIQ after they learned about the company’s product’s success rate:
Before Apple bought the company, VocalIQ tested its product against Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, and the results were impressive. VocalIQ’s success rate was over 90%, while Google Now, Siri, and Cortana were only successful about 20% of the time, according to one source.
By using machine learning, VocalIQ is very capable of completing complex tasks such as managing one’s email while their device is in their pocket:
VocalIQ’s platform is also malleable enough to be programmed for anything you want to do. One example a source gave was teaching it to successfully manage email while a user’s phone was in their pocket. In theory, Apple would be able to train Siri to do everything much better using VocalIQ.
With this type of technology at their finger tips, Apple will be able to use this software in any shape and form they can imagine. VocalIQ’s product can be programmed in many ways and can also be used for voice-controlled in-car applications, something I’m sure looks great to Apple since they’re so deep into the car market already.
It’s really about time we see a major upgrade such as this coming to Siri. Over the past few years, there have been incremental improvements to Siri that have all made the experience better, however not great. We’re still waiting for the day when Siri becomes everyone’s favorite voice assistant because it can do everything alongside more complex operations, and it appears that we’re not too far away from that time.
We’re expecting news about Siri at this year’s WWDC 2016 keynote where we also expect to hear about iOS 10, OS X 10.12 (which is also supposed to feature Siri), watchOS 3, and tvOS 10.
Source: Business Insider via iMore
You must log in to post a comment.