Apple Acquires AI Startup Vilynx to Improve Siri

[eicca]

Meanwhile, autocorrect's "machine learning" continuously results in the most asinine suggestions for words I already spelled correctly. Never once have I ever wanted to say "doh do" instead of "found."

 

[mariusignorello]

or maybe NEST would add secure video service and allow me to connect to my home app

Nest is owned by Google

 

[KrispE00]

My problems with Siri are when I ask for navigation directions and I get the whole Yelp description.
“Hey Siri, take me to the post office.”
“One possibility is US Post Office, but it only gets 1.5 stars according to Yelp. It’s open today from 8am to 4pm. Want to try that one?”
30 seconds later she finishes talking and I’ve already driven past the exit and need to make a u-turn.
Siri gives way too much information. I don’t need to know the number of stars Yelp has given a POI. And if it’s 11am, I don’t need to know that the post office opened at 8am. It’s irrelevant. Honestly, the closing time is irrelevant too unless it’s about to close.
Just give me the possible locations which are currently open and take me there. So easy. Other than that, I like Siri.

 

[boss.king]

while under investigation by Congress for monopolistic behavior

To be fair, this is one area where they're in no danger of taking over.

 

[jz0309]

it might need more than acquiring a startup company to improve Siri ...

 

[jonnysods]

Buy a few more companies to improve it please. I want a Siri that understands Australian!

 

[Christian 5G]

I am waiting for a day Siri is going to be a subscription option 😂

I’m very glad though that Apple will be improving Siri. After every IOS update I feel like she is getting worse

 

[Blowback]

How many companies have the acquired to "improve" Siri at this point?

Siri is a 'very good' street/knife fighter!

 

[ghanwani]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

That response is a lot more benign than incorrectly parsing the request going off and playing some random song.

 

[Anuba]

If you think English Siri is slow on the uptake, you should try 'Language Of Any Small-ish Country We Reluctantly Cater To Because The Per Capita Sales Are Pretty Good After All' Siri.

Think of it this way:

US English Google Assistant IQ:
Lisa Simpson

US English Siri IQ:
Homer Simpson

Scandinavian Google Assistant IQ:
Lisa Simpson

Scandinavian Siri IQ:
Ralph Wiggum

 

[Rob_2811]

This is about the tenth startup they've acquired to improve Siri and its still an absolute stinker.

 

[mfahey]

As one who uses both google and Siri. Siri is far superior for my needs. I do play fart sounds for toddlers on the googles though - the google mini do exceed Siri there.

I'm pretty sure haters don't actually use it. I would point out the last professional comparison ranked Siri and Google about even, google one because of shopping/. who the heck is going to shop by using a voice assistant? I downplayed that, I would never use it, and have been more than happy with Siri. Google has too many misses for me

I agree 100%. I use Siri daily via HomePods and also have Google Nest Mesh for my WiFi through the house. Goggle mesh points also function as "Hi Google" points - so using both extensively. I find Siri is far superior in the quality of the responses and interpretation of my questions/requests.

 

[Cosmosent]

Something seems really Odd about this !

They had 50 Engineers, but the Acquisition Price was ONLY $50M !

NO WAY ! ... unless it was a Fire Sale by the company !

The Description of what they do sounded impressive.

 

[QuarterSwede]

As one who uses both google and Siri. Siri is far superior for my needs. I do play fart sounds for toddlers on the googles though - the google mini do exceed Siri there.

I'm pretty sure haters don't actually use it. I would point out the last professional comparison ranked Siri and Google about even, google one because of shopping/. who the heck is going to shop by using a voice assistant? I downplayed that, I would never use it, and have been more than happy with Siri. Google has too many misses for me

The main problem is that Siri isn’t local on phones yet. The amount of times it can’t complete a message request is maddening simply because it can’t parse what I said. Alexa has zero problem with that. Alexa also gives me better answers than Siri. Siri is better in iOS 14 but it still isn’t at parity with the others. That been my experience.

 

[Jonny Robinson]

I'm not a virtual assistant connoisseur, but I have been continually disappointed by the fact that Siri cannot properly respond to the query "Give me directions to my next appointment." (Or any variation thereof--I've tried many while driving just to make sure it wasn't a language processing failure.)

This seems like really fundamental function that you'd want to have working. You have an address book that Siri knows how to read. You can ask what your next appointment is, and Siri will answer. Those appointments can have locations associated with them. You can ask where your next appointment is, and Siri will tell you. You can ask Siri to give you directions to a specific or even general location ("home" or "the closest post office"), and Siri will start navigation to that place. Heck, if you open Maps, it will even say "Siri suggestions" and show the location of next appointment.

But if you ask for driving directions to your next appointment, which is exactly the sort of thing that is extremely useful to do while you're driving and don't want to have to stop and get your phone out to start navigation, it is impossible to get anything useful.

It's a query that by all rights should work, since Siri knows how to parse all the individual components and has all the information necessary, but no.

Basically, somebody on the Siri team was setting up "Give me directions to" targets, and still, after all these years, has not put "my next appointment" in as one of the available options. So instead Siri needs to decide whether to interpret the query as "Give me directions to [place that I can't find in a map search]" (so you get a useless response) or "[unnecessary filler] my next appointment." (so you get read the appointment but the request for directions is ignored).

It's more frustrating than anything to me when I know Siri has access to all the information I need but cannot synthesize an answer from it that should, programmatically, be very easy to generate. Nothing needs to be inferred, implied, guessed, or pulled from an outside source, and the syntax is simple, unambiguous, and works in other contexts. It is entirely the fault of the Siri team for not properly setting it up.

Yes. If you ask Siri "How many days until Christmas?" She will answer you, however, when you ask her, "How many days until my daughter's birthday?" She will tell you when her birthday is instead, Why?

So, instead I have to ask "How many days until June 26?"

 

[Makosuke]

Yes. If you ask Siri "How many days until Christmas?" She will answer you, however, when you ask her, "How many days until my daughter's birthday?" She will tell you when her birthday is instead, Why?

So, instead I have to ask "How many days until June 26?"

That's the kind of thing that Siri should really be able to answer, and the failure is entirely with which parseable phrases the programmers decided to make available.

If Siri can answer "When's my daughter's birthday?" and can also answer "How many days until April 4?", Siri should be able to parse "How many days until my daughter's birthday." They just didn't hook it up in the parser.

I don't know about birthdays, but they've even demonstrated that it can parse more complex queries; if "Give me directions to the nearest Post Office" works, then it can clearly do "Give me directions to [x]" where [x] is itself a two-argument query for "maps location in the 'Post Office' category that is closest to my current location".

There's also just the more general complaint of "these are things people are going to be very likely to ask"--even if these were complicated synthetic queries that required special cases, you'd still expect the programmers to add them just because they're going to be very likely queries people use.

 

[Ortiz83]

I'm sure they are, my playlists were so bad at one point that I called Apple to see if there was a way to reset everything and redo my song selection. I enjoy Adele, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift as much as the next man but I was 4-5 seconds from setting fire to my phone after the tenth time they popped into a playlist.

So was there a way to reset?

 

[theinstructor]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

The best post of the day. Now, let’s be serious. Apple. You are going to need a LOT more than a startup to fix Siri. It still isn’t fixed since it was released.

 

[dogslobber]

Sounds like a text based browser with vi keystrokes. I'll stick to emacslynx.

 

[theinstructor]

Hey Siri, what time does Best Buy close? “One option I found is...would you like this one?”. I mean W T EVER LOVING F. Ask Google Assistance (Which I hate -Oogle anyway and never use them...) but it works really well.

 

[JMO1]

Something seems really Odd about this !

They had 50 Engineers, but the Acquisition Price was ONLY $50M !

NO WAY ! ... unless it was a Fire Sale by the company !

The Description of what they do sounded impressive.

I’m guess the company didn’t generate a lot of revenue (high burn), actually raised ~10-20m ish and didn’t have major growth prospects. An acqui-hire at about $1m is okay (slightly high in today’s market), but if their quality folks I’m sure it’s was well spent and what was necessary to satisfy VC liquidation pref and motivate the founders and employers to do a deal

 

[Jim Lahey]

I don’t mind Siri. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it works well enough for what I use it for - basic shortcut interactions. Above all else, from a data privacy perspective, it’s the only microphone I’m comfortable with having in my home. I’m sure that’s also not perfect, but I wouldn’t trust Amazon or Google as far as I could throw them.

 

[TheWatchfulOne]

Do you ever like and dislike songs? I presume you are referring to Apple Music. It works great for me. My only complaint is that I say, don't ever ever ever play any rap or country - Siri doesn't seem to get that. But she does not suggest any when I dislike all the rap songs and country crap that ever comes up in a play list or album

For that to work, the music also has to be correctly categorized, which might not be the case.

 

[truthertech]

Now is probably a good time to point out that despite the myths spread on these sites, Siri consistently outperforms Alexa in nearly all categories for accuracy in independent testing. Siri is overall #2, but closing On Google, indeed out performing Google nowadays in some areas, but consistently ahead of Alexa, Cortana, and Bixby.

 

[jont-fu]

Something seems really Odd about this !

They had 50 Engineers, but the Acquisition Price was ONLY $50M !

Take into consideration that the salary of a software engineer in Barcelona is about a third when compared to California.