Siri

Studies cited by the WSJ show that sexist attitudes are alive and well when it comes to preferences for gender in the voices of intelligent assistants.

An Indiana university study found that both men and women prefer a female voice, finding it welcoming, warm and nurturing. Microsoft and Amazon found the same thing in their own research. Even more tellingly, a Stanford University study reveals that preferences for male or female voices depend on the subject matter …

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iOS 10.3 introduces new capabilities like Find My AirPods, but one change that went somewhat under the radar is a new feature aiming to improve Siri and artificial intelligence as a whole. As detailed by ZDNet, a new iCloud Analytics feature aims to collect data from users and use it do improve Siri and other smart features.

We’ve noted several times that Apple desperately needs to improve Siri, especially if a standalone Siri Speaker is in the pipeline. Would you opt-in to iCloud Analytics if you knew it would help Siri?

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A little over a month later and one of the biggest challenges using AirPods has to be the primary means of control, Siri. Within Wi-Fi networks or strong cellular service, Siri usually works reliably, even if with some delay. Step into an elevator or subway, and that voice control interface is rendered useless. Without a good internet connection, Siri just doesn’t work and that means pulling out your phone or using your Apple Watch for controls. It’s a first world problem, sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t push for a better solution. However, even if it’s temporary, there is an offline option to use for now…

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Upate: Partnership on AI has now confirmed that Apple has joined.

A tech industry body established to agree best practice in the use of artificial intelligence had one notable omission in the impressive list of member companies. IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon all signed up, but Apple didn’t.

The Partnership on AI was formed in September, with part of its brief to make recommendations in the areas of ethics, fairness, inclusivity, privacy and trustworthiness – all values you might expect Apple to fully endorse. But while the company didn’t sign up at the time, it appears this is about to change …

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Apple’s rumored Siri Speaker may be hitting the market this year and with it will likely come improvements to Siri itself. Apple, however, won’t be the first to release a standalone speaker with a built-in virtual assistant. Google has already released its solution, Google Home, while Amazon has its Alexa virtual assistant available in several forms, including the Echo and Echo Dot.

The Echo Dot and the Echo series as a whole has been a smash hit success for Amazon and it’s where Apple should take inspiration from for its Siri Speaker, but its success really hinges upon implements to Siri itself…

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There has been speculation that Apple may be planning to build its own home speaker device to compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home, with some expressing the view that Apple is already late to the party.

But does Apple need to compete in this space, when it arguably already has its own version of Echo or Home? The one that’s either on your wrist or in your pocket …

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Researchers from several U.S. universities say that Siri has improved its responses to medical emergencies and personal crises since last year, but that more work is needed.

A Stanford study carried out a year ago found that intelligent assistants like Siri, Cortana and Samsung’s S Voice often failed to recognize when someone needed help, and would sometimes respond with flippant remarks or merely offer a web search when someone made a statement like ‘I am depressed.’ The lead author of that study, Stanford clinical psychologist Adam Miner, says that he has seen improvements since then …

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A few days after having received my AirPods order, I’ve quickly come to realize how the lack of accessible audio playback controls can hinder the overall experience. In my previous reviews of true wireless earbuds, I’ve consistently brought up on-device controls as a positive or a negative. When you remove the wire and the controls so many of us have gotten used to, offering a new means of control is necessary.

With the AirPods, the main and only means of audio playback control is by double-tapping above the AirPods’ stem. Based on your settings this either activates Siri, allowing you to speak all of the basic playback commands, or controls play/pause for audio. Double-tapping and only being able to play/pause controls aren’t enough for daily usage, but relying on Siri, especially when internet connections are weaker, makes for a cumbersome experience at best. These issues highlight the need for Apple to introduce an offline mode for Siri.

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An Apple patent published today describes how Siri could interject in iMessage chats to do things like help schedule meetings based on the location and availability of chat participants.

In one illustration, when one chat participant asks ‘How long ’til you guys get here?’ Siri interjects by checking everyone’s location and then answering the question. In another, a chat participant asks Siri when the group could get together for lunch, and it checks each of their diaries to offer slots when all are free …

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With iOS 10, Apple added the ability for six categories of application to integrate with the iOS personal assistant, Siri. One of these groups was mobile payments. The PayPal app for iOS has now been updated with this integration, so you can use natural language voice queries to send and receive money.

Using your contact address book, queries like ‘Hey Siri send David $20 using PayPal’ will bring up a confirmation sheet in the Siri conversation with one button to confirm.

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We learned two years ago that Apple was setting up an R&D center in Cambridge, England, to tap academic research expertise. Business Insider thinks it knows the focus of the work the team there is performing.

Those working inside are aiming to make Siri talk more naturally, according to a source that knows a number of Apple’s Cambridge employees […]

Apple’s Cambridge office is home to less than 30 people, including many of the employees from VocalIQ — a voice recognition startup that was spun out from the university and acquired by Apple in 2015.

VocalIQ is a tool specifically geared to allowing truly conversational queries …

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With the release of Google Assistant, supplanting Google Now on the new Pixel with Android 7.1, Google’s speech recognition/AI engine is supposed to be more personable and less robotic. At the same time, Apple has been improving the accuracy and intelligence of Siri, which has until now been a distant second in the assistant space when it comes to accuracy. With the below video comparing iPhone 7 Plus and the the Pixel XL, YouTuber MKBHD shows that both have come a long way…
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While Siri did get smarter with the launch of iOS 10, it’s still widely believed that the Apple’s virtual assistant lags behind offering from Google and even the original creators of Siri. Today, tech veteran Walt Mossberg penned a column that asks the question, “Why does Siri seem so dumb?”

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As regular readers will know, I’m a long-time fan of Siri. It’s my default way to interact with my iPhone: from checking the weather forecast through opening apps to dictating text messages. It was the sole reason I upgraded from the iPhone 4 to the 4S back in the day.

At the same time, I’ve also long wanted Siri to do more. Last month, Apple finally granted the request I made last year: to give her access to third-party apps. But I was also hoping then for more – much more – while Apple seems to be content to expand Siri’s capabilities at a relatively leisurely pace.

Many of Siri’s original developers, it turned out, had also grown frustrated at Apple’s apparent lack of ambition for the intelligent assistant. They wanted to proceed at a much faster pace, and finally parted company with Apple to develop a next-generation assistant, Viv. The demonstration they gave back in May seriously impressed me, and I said then than Viv was what Siri should always have become …

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Now that Siri has finally arrived on the Mac, Apple’s intelligent assistant just got a whole lot more useful. But some users are finding that this has only increased their frustration – because the service is unable to cope with more than one language.

Making Siri bilingual might, at first glance, seem an unreasonable request. After all, it’s taken speech recognition a very long time indeed to reliably understand one language at a time. I first tried a prototype system way back in the 1980s, when it was utterly hopeless. I’d try another one every few years, but it’s only in the past seven or eight years that it’s been any good.

But there are many places in the world where it’s extremely common to speak more than one language. In particular, speaking English and a local language is the norm in many countries. Which means that you may well be speaking to Siri in English but asking it to find, for example, a German place. Or speaking to Siri in Dutch but asking it to call someone with an English name …

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Amazon Echo speaker with intelligent voice assistant

We first heard suggestions that Apple was working on its own equivalent to Amazon’s Echo – an intelligent voice-controlled assistant in a speaker – in the run-up to WWDC back in May. A subsequent report suggested that the device would feature a camera capable of facial-recognition to identify household members and set preferences.

Little more has been heard since then, but a new Bloomberg report says that the product now exists in prototype form and has begun testing outside the lab …

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