No it wasn’t. That’s just a stupid thing to say.
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Apple Acquires AI Startup Voysis to Improve Siri
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Thank you!
I just hope Apple understands that employing the former head of Google’s AI engineer whom in 1.5yrs of hefty salary and bonuses has ONLy managed to:
make Siri’s voice sound more human,
Purchase and add shortcuts,
And now purchase other smaller companies.
at this point Apple is looking like a complete FARCE in the AI game.
Sad really.
The problem is not Siri, it’s “AI” in general. There is no artificial intelligence, and cognitive activities of the human mind cannot be simulated with a digital computer. Computer software by its nature is incapable of abstraction and context. The AI crowd has given us seven decades of parlor tricks — how many billions did Apple waste on this fool’s errand?
Siri really needs to learn to deal with multiple languages, because it's essentially useless otherwise.
I live in Italy and even though I set iOS to English (mostly because many third-party apps are localized pretty badly), I keep Siri in Italian as it's more convenient.
Yet trying to play specific songs or artists via Siri is essentially impossible except for Italian titles or artists. Anything else gets consistently misunderstood, and it gets worse the more the English pronunciation differs from what an Italian-who-doesn't-speak-English would say.
So "Comfortably Numb" generally works (probably due to "Comfortably" being read pretty much the same), but "Get the Funk Out" gets mangled into "Canta Soundcloud" (what?), "Gatto fan cut" (?!), "Che da fadeout" and other similar things. "The Book of Love" seems easy, but Siri thinks I said "Che podcast love", or just drops everything except "Love". I ask to play "Distance over time" and it thinks I said "Che senso va il timer". "Waiting for my Real Life to Begin" is misunderstood as "Waiting for marino va il tuo weekend", "Vueling for Maria Lai Stupid And" or "Waiting for Maria Life's Too B King".
That's just mildly annoying when driving, and I fall back to let it play whatever it wants. Trying to reply to a message in English, however, is completely impossible. If I were to set Siri in English, I would have the opposite problem. There's really no way out of this, and it's frankly quite frustrating, especially when trying to rely on it to do things while at the wheel.
Note that I do not have a strong Italian accent when I speak in English, in fact most Brits are surprised when they learn that I'm Italian because I sound American. Siri simply does not understand multiple languages, nor speak them either... having it read my messages out loud is often hilarious, as it will assume that they're all in Italian and mess them up when other languages come up.
It would be great if it could be possible to have Siri switch to a different language on the fly ("Ehi Siri passa all'inglese", "Hey Siri switch to Italian") but given how tight Apple is with allowing systems settings to be changed — you can't even automatically trigger a Shortcut when you connect to a bluetooth device, and still have to touch the notification — I doubt that'll happen soon. That means that Siri will keep being mostly useless for the foreseeable future, unless they allow us to set another assistant as a default.
(As a side note, since Apple Maps is also mediocre in my area, I managed to find a workaround for that: I just ask Siri to pass on to Waze whatever I ask: "Ehi Siri, indicazioni per centro commerciale Megalò via Waze" works well, as long as the address or destination is understood by Siri...)
I live in Italy and even though I set iOS to English (mostly because many third-party apps are localized pretty badly), I keep Siri in Italian as it's more convenient.
Yet trying to play specific songs or artists via Siri is essentially impossible except for Italian titles or artists. Anything else gets consistently misunderstood, and it gets worse the more the English pronunciation differs from what an Italian-who-doesn't-speak-English would say.
So "Comfortably Numb" generally works (probably due to "Comfortably" being read pretty much the same), but "Get the Funk Out" gets mangled into "Canta Soundcloud" (what?), "Gatto fan cut" (?!), "Che da fadeout" and other similar things. "The Book of Love" seems easy, but Siri thinks I said "Che podcast love", or just drops everything except "Love". I ask to play "Distance over time" and it thinks I said "Che senso va il timer". "Waiting for my Real Life to Begin" is misunderstood as "Waiting for marino va il tuo weekend", "Vueling for Maria Lai Stupid And" or "Waiting for Maria Life's Too B King".
That's just mildly annoying when driving, and I fall back to let it play whatever it wants. Trying to reply to a message in English, however, is completely impossible. If I were to set Siri in English, I would have the opposite problem. There's really no way out of this, and it's frankly quite frustrating, especially when trying to rely on it to do things while at the wheel.
Note that I do not have a strong Italian accent when I speak in English, in fact most Brits are surprised when they learn that I'm Italian because I sound American. Siri simply does not understand multiple languages, nor speak them either... having it read my messages out loud is often hilarious, as it will assume that they're all in Italian and mess them up when other languages come up.
It would be great if it could be possible to have Siri switch to a different language on the fly ("Ehi Siri passa all'inglese", "Hey Siri switch to Italian") but given how tight Apple is with allowing systems settings to be changed — you can't even automatically trigger a Shortcut when you connect to a bluetooth device, and still have to touch the notification — I doubt that'll happen soon. That means that Siri will keep being mostly useless for the foreseeable future, unless they allow us to set another assistant as a default.
(As a side note, since Apple Maps is also mediocre in my area, I managed to find a workaround for that: I just ask Siri to pass on to Waze whatever I ask: "Ehi Siri, indicazioni per centro commerciale Megalò via Waze" works well, as long as the address or destination is understood by Siri...)
move noticed that too lately at night (EST) or while watching a movie via AppleTV (not used as speaker) to my HomePod.
Siri randomly, self only but occurs,say “hmm-mmm” and it’s alarming to wake up at 3AM to that.
If during a movie I’ll rewind to find what triggered Siri to no avail.
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LMAO “"Get the Funk Out" gets mangled into "Canta Soundcloud" “
I have an Italian friend who’s accent was heavily strong (born in the north not Sicili) and I can definitely see how Sori or even anyone else in Canada would hear Canta SoundCloud with your example.
sucks though and not sure if region and core language is setup originally or would fare better. I really think you should write into Apple and head of iOS/macOS on this.
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Considering Siri was the first AI of its ilk (launched with the 4s), it's frankly an embarrassment. Alexa leaves it in its dust... Now I just use Siri for setting timers and even then it can just look at me dumbly for an uncomfortable period of time before it finally complies. Alexa is far more useful.
Apparently it’s not the same... because...
iOS Google Assistant... can't get Siri on a Pixel.
That's on iOS though which might be gimping it like 3rd party browsers which can't use their own rendering engine but forced to use the inferior of two Apple rendering engines while Safari uses the better one.
https://www.howtogeek.com/184283/wh...ays-be-inferior-to-safari-on-iphone-and-ipad/
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Doubtful. That'd be on Google to properly support it. Generally speaking, Google apps on iOS are better than the Android versions.
Examples? In addition to gimping Chrome and Assistant, Apple also gimps YouTube by removing VP9 codec support so you're limited to 1080p and an inefficient AVC codec.
Or google doesn’t conform to what Apple needs. ( They already give Apple $9b) Doesn’t seem like either side is giving in.
Apple doesn't gimp Assistant. Google does. VP9 is trash and is dying - Apple (and everyone else) made the right choice - they're replacing it with AV1.
Anyway... basically all of them. Gmail, Maps, Hangouts when it existed, hell Gboard was an iPhone exclusive for a long time and still gets updates first...
Apple just has better APIs and is easier to develop for, and the team at Google for iOS excels with the tools.
You can Google this one... it's a common complaint from the Android side.
Imagine wanting to listen to a specific song while driving and asking Siri by voice (provided "Hey Siri" works — I swear it feels like its ability to get triggered by voice degrades over time and requires periodical re-training, but I guess it may just be how I talk when driving as opposed to when I'm at home?) and getting that kind of response.
It's even more annoying when using Siri Eyes Free, which my car stereo supports, because the screen blanks out with just a picture of a car; that's the point of it, obviously, but at least "Hey Siri" allows you to glance at the screen to get an idea of whether it's understanding you correctly or not.
I actually did use the Feedback page on Apple's site to report these things, but that never really led to anything. I doubt that they don't know though, because Siri's mediocre listening skills are the main complaint about it outside of the US.
You'd be amazed at how little Siri does in languages other than English; the thing it does, are often exceedingly awkward. Last I tried to get live football scores for a specific team out of it, for instance (well before the lockdown obviously), it kept asking me whether I was looking for Serie A or Champions League. Except it was Sunday afternoon, and Champions League plays mid-week at night. Cherry on top, it even mispronounced "Champions League".
Even for more basic things such as adding a reminder, if often messes up prepositions by applying zero language processing to the text ("Domani all'una ricordami del commercialista" => adds a reminder saying "del commercialista" instead of "il commercialista" or "commercialista"), and it doesn't even cover all possible ways that one may naturally ask for something: apparently "my" way is fine, but a friend of mine had to start rephrasing things just to make Siri happy, because it wouldn't otherwise understand his perfectly natural (just somewhat different) way of saying the same thing.
The worst, as I detailed, is trying to do anything in both the local language and any other — most people speak at least two languages so that's a daily occurrence, and while the output is messed up but can be somehow figured out, there's just no way to provide proper input in any language other than the one Siri is using, regardless of how perfect the user's pronunciation is in the other language.
I'm not trying to convince anyone, but the world does not end where people speak English natively. Many people around the world speak two or more languages and alternate among them over the course of the day. If Apple is serious about Siri being a first-class voice assistant, they ought to step up their game dramatically. I'm not sure about Alexa but I had a chance to try Google Assistant and it's way better at handling all of those issues.
If acquiring AI startups and other companies actually improved anything Apple would be the leader of AI assistance but they're not.
I can't wait for Siri to improve I wonder what non-feature will be added this year. Apple adds maybe one or two questions an updated. Google is literally thousands. It's an absolute joke. This has to be the dictionary definition of "too little too late".
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That's some of the problems with Apple handling AI and offline Siri is long overdue that is doable years ago with neural engine.