Apple Says 'Hey Siri' Detection Briefly Becomes Extra Sensitive If Your First Try Doesn't Work

[ZZ Bottom]

My biggest problem with Siri is not any of the silly one-off bugs that get memed to death on the internet.

My biggest problem was described beautifully in a recent article I read somewhere. About how a voice assistant with 10 possible working commands is great. And one with unlimited working commands is great. But one with hundreds of working commands is terrible, because the user will never know what all those commands are. They will just use the core few that they know. And if they try a command and it isn't one of those hundreds, it causes confusion and doubt.

Well stated. Siri feels so far behind in natural language or simulated conversation compared to Alexa. I’d prefer the convenience of Siri, but even in iOS 11 I’m perpetually disappointed.

 

[tennisproha]

The problem I've had is that it triggers even without saying 'hey siri'. Just having a normal conversation with someone sometimes triggers it.

 

[User 6502]

There's a lot going on behind the scenes with Siri. I don't think we give her enough credit.

On the contrary, I think we give it far too much credit. It's by far the worst vocal assistant, according to every single comparison.

 

[macTW]

Everything about Siri is amazing, and far beyond any competition.

Except her ability to do stuff.

 

[Marlor]

This extra sensitivity is probably why "Hey Siri" goes off constantly every time I mention the word "theory" in my lectures.

"This approach is based on the theory... *beep boop* ... that the situation can be reduced to a weighted graph... *here's what I found for weight-loss*... This works in theory *beep boop* but not always in practice ... *sorry, I didn't understand that*".

Let's not get me started about when I talk to friends about international politics, in particular the situation in Syria.

 

[Nunyabinez]

This makes me laugh a little. When I get frustrated or encounter stupidity (apparently both happen frequently) a common response it seems, is for me to say "Are you serious?!"

The reason this has come to my attention is that on a number of occasions that phrase has resulted in my iPhone going "Bonk, Bonk" followed by "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

So, apparently that probability matrix has a fair amount of wiggle room.

 

[Rychiar]

hey siri used to work pretty well on my watch. since watch OS4 though I find it works about 10% of the time

 

[RickInHouston]

I wonder if we will be able to use more than one Hey Siri on the HomePod. It would be nice if it could tell the difference between my son, my wife and I just based off of that command.

Get back over the wall. You just crossed into Google Home territory by mistake.

 

[bingeciren]

I guess I’m old fashioned. I think Siri is useless. I have no patience trying to make Siri understand what I want to say. Besides I feel uncomfortable speaking to Siri when people are around.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

There has to be something new going on with regards to it’s understanding. After initiating Hey Siri in the car, her comprehension through the Bluetooth system has been notably better for me during the past year. I was wondering if the 7 was doing some machine learning locally, or if the cloud was parsing my questions better with this device. My 5S still struggles with my voice, though it could also be the mics on that device too.



Apple would help Siri’s reputation a lot, by keeping an active Wiki going for the service, and what commands it will respond to. Because many people have tried to use Siri once for a specific task, found it didn’t work, and since given up. It is really hard for a general user to discover new tricks.

Places like iMore do a decent job of documenting, but, it would be AWESOME if the source had a good manual for it..

There is a wiki more or less of Siri’s capabilities but not what I would call comprehensive.

https://www.apple.com/ios/siri/

 

[Schizoid]

I just had a quick check on the Mac to see if anything's changed...

Me: "How many files have I opened today?"
Siri: "on the internet I found 'how big is Allah.'"

maybe next year

 

[kemal]

I don't want people to know I still use Siri. And No, Siri can't even turn off the "Hey Siri" feature.

 

[sansin]

I dislike Siri purely because of the snark and attitude. Siri's use case is to be my virtual assistant and to help me manage basic simple tasks. I can't imagine having a human assistant with the same level of snark as Siri.

I also can't stand Apple's attempts to make Siri cute on April Fool's Day. On many occasions over the past year, I've asked Siri to "flip a coin" - a simple command with a simple answer that helps me and the coworkers settle on a place for lunch (as an example). Well, April 1st rolls around and Siri couldn't give a real answer to that question all day long. She kept claiming "the coin landed on its side - what are the chances..." - I quit using Siri after that. Apple ruined a tool that was useful and served a purpose for the sake of playing "me too" with Google and other April Fool's Day gags.

All you had to say was "no, seriously, flip a coin". And Siri would snap out of its jestful mood.

 

[Razeus]

There's a lot going on behind the scenes with Siri. I don't think we give her enough credit.

That's her own doing. It still doesn't work like it should and newcomers like a Cortana and Alexa are years ahead, while Siri had come out years before.

 

[Bacillus]

That's her own doing. It still doesn't work like it should and newcomers like a Cortana and Alexa are years ahead, while Siri had come out years before.

I want a Neural Intrepreter that is soo bad, that it interprets "Hey Siri" as "Hi Alexa"
(without any of the 1.000.000 calculations/coprocessors/fancytricks at all)

 

[sdwaltz]

Personally I'd just be happy if "hey siri" worked while my phone was in my pocket. Have to take it out every time.

 

[MRI3T]

“It then uses a temporal integration process to compute a confidence score”

But won’t the tachyons interfere with the marzipan regulators when they do this?

And don’t forget about the 1.21 jigawatts of power also needed...

 

[Bacillus]

Personally I'd just be happy if "hey siri" worked while my phone was in my pocket. Have to take it out every time.

That would only work if FaceID would be supplemented by VoiceID

 

[upandown]

How about getting the feature promoted in iOS 10 to work. Where only one device answers in the same room. That feature never works for me.

 

[sdwaltz]

That would only work if FaceID would be supplemented by VoiceID

How so?

The sound the mic picks up while the phone is in my pocket shouldn’t be so muffled that Siri couldn’t pick it up, should it?

 

[Caviar_X]

I disabled hey siri as soon as I setup my iphone. For simple tasks such as setting an alarm or timer, it's fine. I do like I am able to switch Siri using a male British dialect.

 

[CarlJ]

My biggest problem was described beautifully in a recent article I read somewhere. About how a voice assistant with 10 possible working commands is great. And one with unlimited working commands is great. But one with hundreds of working commands is terrible, because the user will never know what all those commands are. They will just use the core few that they know. And if they try a command and it isn't one of those hundreds, it causes confusion and doubt.

Very much this. If Siri was on par with Jarvis, that'd be wonderful. But she's not. There are some things I can count on Siri getting right every time - "set an alarm for 3pm" works great even if I rattle it off quickly and there's noise in the background - while other commands get lost.

There are also times when I really wish she had some simple meta syntax available, even though that'd be pulling back the veil to show she's a computer, it could be done in a conversational manner - for instance, when she keeps getting a street name wrong, and thus can't find the location to give me directions, I'd love to be able to say, "Siri, you are mishearing the street name, let me spell it for you", and have her say, "okay, go ahead", and then give her the name one letter at a time, ending with "done" or "endquote" or "endspelling" or some such. Would be so much better than trying 7 different mispronunciations of a less common name, fighting in vain to keep her from going with the more common spelling. This also comes up a lot if you're trying to get directions to a business that has a "cute" name.

 

[symphony]

There's a lot going on behind the scenes with Siri. I don't think we give her enough credit.

I think its because she’s a woman.

I believe we should drop our sexist beliefs on women, all women are smart, intelligent, and extremely funny.

 

[dippnerd]

My biggest problem was described beautifully in a recent article I read somewhere. About how a voice assistant with 10 possible working commands is great. And one with unlimited working commands is great. But one with hundreds of working commands is terrible, because the user will never know what all those commands are. They will just use the core few that they know. And if they try a command and it isn't one of those hundreds, it causes confusion and doubt.

I understand your point, but let's be honest, you can't just go from 0 to 100% over night with something like this. Initially Siri did only have a handful of commands and it was easy to understand, but we're now in the awkward puberty years of Siri learning to mature and blossom into the AI of science-fiction. The complexity we see now is because they've tied Siri into a lot of OS functionality, laying down a foundation for something that will ultimately be far more capable once the AI side of it catches up.

If Siri was on par with Jarvis, that'd be wonderful. But she's not.

I don't think it's a lack of wanting Siri to be like Jarvis, it's just that no assistant is there yet. They're all still "children" in the grand scheme of things, we have to teach them first.

 

[AlbinoPigeon]

I recently started using Hey Siri, and it works pretty well in my experience.

There are still too many web searches, and sometimes I wish it was more context aware. When I say, "what time is the pats game?" on a Sunday, I am not talking about the junior hockey team called the Regina Pats and their game against the Brandon Wheat Kings. Maybe if I was in Canada, this would be an appropriate answer, but it knows from location services that I am firmly in the epicenter of Patriots territory.

Also, follow-up questions should be context aware. "What is the high temperature tomorrow?" "What will be the low?" It doesn't ever get the second question.

Oh man, that is the funniest! I hear you though, when I'm searching for directions in Maps, I often get streets from small US towns often half a continent away from where I am (Vancouver, BC). Often it's for commonly named streets (Main, Broadway, 2nd Ave).

It's odd, because Apple has all the pieces. For example, when typing, the keyboard analyses your previous words to predict the words that you might need next. It uses current context to make future predictions. Why not do the same for Siri requests?