Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Siri Co-Founders Building Viv, a Next-Generation Flexible Virtual Assistant

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,489
30,726



When Apple acquired Siri in 2010, several members of the team behind the technology joined Apple to continue development of the virtual assistant. As iOS evolved and the vision for Siri changed, co-founders Dag Kitt­laus and Adam Cheyer left Apple to pursue other opportunities. This liberation led to their reunion and the formation of Viv Labs, which is now working on new virtual assistant software that may change how we interact with our devices. Writer Steven Levy takes a close look at Viv in a lengthy profile on Wired.

viv.jpeg
Viv Labs is building a virtual assistant that is capable of more than just pre-programmed answers in response to a question. Viv expands further into the realm of artificial intelligence with a codebase that can interpret the question, make connections across a variety of services and apps and even generate code on the fly if needed to formulate an answer. Team members describe Viv as a "global brain" that can learn about its users and adapt to their preferences.
Take a complicated command like "Give me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in." Viv will parse the sentence and then it will perform its best trick: automatically generating a quick, efficient program to link third-party sources of information together--say, Kayak, SeatGuru, and the NBA media guide--so it can identify available flights with lots of legroom. And it can do all of this in a fraction of a second.
Click to expand...
Unlike Siri, which was targeted at the iPhone even before its acquisition by Apple, Kitt­laus and his team hope to license the technology and bring Viv to a variety of devices including TVs, cars and other Internet-connected devices.
"I'm extremely proud of Siri and the impact it's had on the world, but in many ways it could have been more," Cheyer says. "Now I want to do something bigger than mobile, bigger than consumer, bigger than desktop or enterprise. I want to do something that could fundamentally change the way software is built."
Click to expand...
Viv is an ambitious project that is still in the early stages of development, but the vision is revolutionary. "If this team is successful, we are looking at the future of intelligent agents and a multibillion-dollar industry," said AI expert Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence to Wired.

It's unclear whether Apple will be interested in the technology and what kind of relationship the two companies might have given their history with Siri, but what is clear is that Siri's inventors have much broader ambitions in mind.

Article Link: Siri Co-Founders Building Viv, a Next-Generation Flexible Virtual Assistant
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/12/siri-viv-virtual-assistant/
Yvan256

Yvan256

macrumors 603
Jul 5, 2004
5,081
998
Canada
Here's a test scenario: "Viv, pick up the best parts for a PC capable of running Final Fantasy XIV at medium settings in 720p for under 200$ CAD, minus the monitor, keyboard and mouse."
 
dlewis23

dlewis23

macrumors 65816
Oct 23, 2007
1,149
1,827
If its good hopefully some or all of it will make its way into Siri. Personally I hope Siri gets some attention in iOS 9 and always listening for Hey Siri with iPhone 6.
 
MacSince1990

MacSince1990

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2009
1,347
0
If you're going to your brother's house for some cheap wine in order to match your lasagna, I'm not sure Viv can help you with the larger issues at hand.
 
T

thaifood

macrumors 6502
Jun 8, 2011
310
96
thekeyring said:
If they can develop this, what stopped them developing it for Siri when they were at Apple?
Click to expand...

It probably was too early in the planning stage to release any information on it. Or it wasn't possible with their knowledge a the time.
 
C

commander.data

macrumors 65816
Nov 10, 2006
1,057
183
Now that Apple and IBM are close, if Siri and Watson got together and spawned a code child it would probably look very much like Viv.
 
Keane16

Keane16

macrumors 6502a
Dec 8, 2007
810
671
I imagine Siri, Cortana and Google Now should slowly get to be just like Viv as their feature sets grow.

I hope so anyway.
 
W

winston1236

macrumors 68000
Dec 13, 2010
1,902
319
They should just copy Google's voice software, its beats Siri to death in terms of voice recognition.
 
carjakester

carjakester

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2013
2,228
55
Midwest
would you like me to search that for you?

No siri i want you to search it, find the answer and give me that answer. Viv seems like a step in the right direction.
 
P

prowlmedia

Suspended
Jan 26, 2010
1,589
813
London
winston1236 said:
They should just copy Google's voice software, its beats Siri to death in terms of voice recognition.
Click to expand...

1. Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with Siri or Apple.
2. Depends on your dialect. Works perfectly for me. Google on the other hand, fails to recognise most British-English accents completely.
 
ArtOfWarfare

ArtOfWarfare

macrumors G3
Nov 26, 2007
9,558
6,058
thekeyring said:
If they can develop this, what stopped them developing it for Siri when they were at Apple?
Click to expand...

The fact that Apple needed a service that would run on an iPhone, be just for consumers, and they needed it ASAP.

Leaving Apple means that they're completely free to make it as they want without limitation... well, except how much capital they have to work with. But I'd imagine they're pretty well off on that front having been the people behind Siri.

Also, I feel like they may be understating it when they say this is a multi-billion dollar industry. It sounds like it has the potential to be a multi-trillion dollar industry to me. I mean, really, we're talking a computer capable of programming itself. At that point, computers will be capable of replacing almost anyone... the only thing they wouldn't be capable of replacing would be being the person who formulates tasks that Viv needs to fulfill. And if Viv is done right, maybe all you need to do is have Viv program that replacement, too.

I wonder at that point what we, as a species, even bother doing at that point.
 
SgtPepper12

SgtPepper12

macrumors 6502a
Feb 1, 2011
697
673
Germany
Actually I can't remember any personal assistant that didn't claim to have some magic ability to understand language. The problem is that it's still fake. Sure, when you read stuff like "Give me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in." it sounds impressive, but the problem to me is: Who the hell talks like that? Nobody does. And I wouldn't even try, because I'm talking to a program and not to a basketball enthusiast who'd laugh about the reference. It would be much more convenient if the program understands real language and not some artificial test sentences to impress people in a keynote. I just have the feeling that the focus here is totally lost.
 
Boosf

Boosf

macrumors member
Jun 10, 2011
87
122
Seattle, WA
Hey Viv!

Hi Viv,

I need something to get blood stains out of a carpet and the GPS location of an out of the away place to bury something. Also, could you give me information on shovels and the location of the nearest hardware store?:D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom