Siri creators officially show off ‘Viv,’ their powerful new personal assistant [Video]

Last week, the creators of Siri teased their next virtual assistant service named Viv. At the time, the creators said that Viv does more than Siri or any other virtual assistant currently available. As expected, Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus today took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City to officially show off Viv to the public for the first time, touting that it will “the intelligent interface for everything.”

Kittlaus demonstrated Viv to a room of attendees, asking the personal assistant a handful of incredibly specific questions. For instance, Kittlaus demonstrated Viv’s integration with third-party services. He showed the ability to book a hotel room using integration with Hotels.com, the ability to call for a car via Uber, and the ability to order flowers.

Viv is also able to answer other very specific questions. “Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden gate bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?,” Kittlaus asked Viv at one point on stage. Kittlaus made a point to note that all of the demo was entirely live, which is impressive considering it went off without any issue at all.

Also during the keynote, Kittlaus discussed what the future holds for Viv. The creator made sure to explain that one of the biggest keys to Viv’s success will be “perfecting the third-party ecosystem.” Viv relies heavily on integration with third-party services like Uber and Venom and Kittlaus noted that this type of integration is crucial to the personal assistant’s success.

Speaking on rumors regarding attempted acquisitions by Google and Facebook, Kittlaus simply said, “Yeah you’ve heard about them, you can read about it probably.” Those acquisitions reportedly are not moving forward, although Viv has raised $12.5 million in funding from people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.

A specific timeline for a Viv launch is still unclear at this point, but Kittlaus noted that early integrations would begin “later this year.” Viv is very much what Siri was originally intended to be. Prior to selling Siri to Apple in 2010 for $200 million, Kittlaus and his team had integrated support for nearly 45 services, only for Apple to simplify it significantly.

You can watch the full video of Viv’s unveil below. Let us know in the comments how you think the service compares to Siri: