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Siri Creators Debuting New AI Assistant 'Viv' Next Week

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Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, co-founders of Siri, the virtual assistant now built into all of Apple's iOS devices, are set to demonstrate their newest artificial intelligence project on Monday, reports The Washington Post. Viv, the name of the AI bot, is more advanced than Siri and is able to carry out complex tasks by mimicking the "spontaneity and knowledge base" of a human assistant.

Viv can, for example, set up a dinner reservation and purchase movie tickets all based on one query, parsing ticket prices to find deals and offering suggestions if a movie is sold out or a restaurant has no seating available. Completing the same task with Siri would require multiple commands and human interaction. In an example given by The Washington Post, the Viv team uses it to order pizzas from a nearby restaurant, with Viv parsing numerous voice-based topping and side dish orders without ever needing to open an app.

viv-800x533.jpg
Image via The Washington Post​

Much of Viv's functionality is enabled through integration with third-party apps like Uber, Florist One, SeatGuru, ZocDoc, and Grubhub, similar to Amazon's Alexa. The team behind Viv is in talks to bring on more partners and plans bring the Viv technology to a variety of Internet-connected devices like cars and TVs.
Grubhub chief executive Matt Maloney said he rushed to sign up with Viv two years ago, impressed with the idea of allowing consumers to perform different activities without having to toggle between services. "No one has been able to say, 'I want the movie ticket, and the bottle of wine, and some flowers on the side' -- all in one breath," he said.
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The goal with Viv, according to Kittlaus, is to offer a way for humans to interact naturally with services through complex human-to-human style conversations, a project Kittlaus and Cheyer have been pursuing since before the development of Siri.

Siri was built around the same premise, but underwent changes under Apple's leadership. "Steve [Jobs] had some ideas about the first version, and it wasn't necessarily aligned with all the things that we were doing," Kittlaus told The Washington Post.

Google and Facebook have already made offers to purchase Viv, but it is not clear if Kittlaus and Cheyer have plans to sell the technology. The Viv Labs team wants to see the technology built into a wide range of devices, and Kittlaus says the company will "pick the path that gets us there."

Article Link: Siri Creators Debuting New AI Assistant 'Viv' Next Week
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/04/siri-creators-debuting-viv/
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Crosscreek said:
If they want a company to work with they should stay away from Apple. Too many internal politics and it will get shoved in the conner somewhere and never see the light of day.
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So sad, yet so true. :apple:
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Mac Fly (film) said:
Sells to highest bidder in 3, 2, 1...
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These guys will stay away from Apple like the plague. They left Apple soon after the acquisition of Siri. You wonder why Siri has stayed so underwhelming? Because these guys left to work on furthering their ideas in an innovative setting. Sure as hell is not Cupertino. :apple:
 
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longofest said:
Hey guys... We got Apple to buy us once. Now that Apple isn't spending any money on Siri, let's split off and invent another AI, make it a bit smarter, and then sell it back to Apple again and make a crapton more money!
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I would have thought Apple would have been smart enough to put something in writing when they bought Siri, that would keep these guys from doing this very thing. Don't most business do that when they buy the rights to something? Otherwise, whats the point? Um, no this isn't Siri... its Viv. Totally different. In the same way that iOS 7 is totally different than iOS 9.
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CFreymarc said:
Voice recognition using a relational database with multiple associative weighed vendors creating a single response based on compounded queries. Not bad work boys!
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Coming from someone who has no idea of the technical work involved in something like that, I think its kind of boring. Great another VA (not AI) that can order me a pizza, only now I can specify that I want anchovies on it. Great. Mind-blowing. Innovative!
 
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CFreymarc said:
Voice recognition using a relational database with multiple associative weighed vendors creating a single response based on compounded queries. Not bad work boys!
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This very well could set the precedent for human interaction vs Artificial Intelligence, more specifically...integrating personal responses based on need more than demand. Most Artificial Responses can only accrue a sentence or two at max. With Viv, this could potentially open Pandora's Box for a whole new dimension.

The price tag on Viv would set the market on fire, potentially submerging Siri.
[doublepost=1462404927][/doublepost]They won't come with in 10 feet of Apple. Why? Because their smart enough to understand the net worth of this project and ultimately its projected future.
 
WhoDaKat said:
I would have thought Apple would have been smart enough to put something in writing when they bought Siri, that would keep these guys from doing this very thing. Don't most business do that when they buy the rights to something?
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Noncompete agreements are not enforceable in California. Apple would have to prove that they are using something that they own, like a patent or trade secret.
 
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