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Apple Working on 'Enhanced Siri' Capabilities for Next-Generation iPhones
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On the other hand, Amazon's Echo has an array of 7 microphone and does all sorts of on-device noise cancellation and beam forming. Ironically, it was Amazon rather than Apple that figured out the importance of hardware/service integration when it comes to voice recognition.
I don't know what Apple will do given the size and power restrictions that exist on phones that don't exist on the standalone voice assistant, but hardware does matter.
For that example, Google is not pulling data from any other app I'm using. I simply ask it to show me flights between two random, large cities. Has nothing to do with other apps I have.
[doublepost=1485351750][/doublepost]That example is not an opinion. Go ahead, try it on both Siri and Google Now and post back your results.To be fair, Google is excellent in that regard because it's able to pull data from many other apps that the same person uses.
My phone has had reminders that I've got an auto payment on my gas bill, or an upcoming flight at [time] to [destination] on Wed., all from Google. I was confused by that, but realized Google is going through my Gmail again. Google just got cooler and creepier too!
Here's the problem with your example: it's one example. AI assistants don't have general intelligence. All AI assistants currently enable features with specifically developed integration. Google has a flight booking service, and so they've integrated that into their voice assistant. That's really cool, but it doesn't mean Google is fundamentally better than Siri.
There are three fundamental things to look at when evaluating a voice assistant:
- Syntactic understanding: how well does it hear you? Does it accurately transcribe your voice commands into words?
- Semantic understanding: how well does it understand what you're asking for? Is it capable of understanding your intention regardless of how you phrased the command, or does it require rigidly defined commands?
- Capability: what types of tasks can it do? Does it have access to lots of useful data and integrations?
Points 1 and 2 can blur a bit but this is, in my opinion, the fundamental framework that ought to be used for evaluating these assistants. Your example with the flights only goes to point 3 and it is, as I said, a very limited analysis; maybe Siri is missing flight information but has a bunch of other useful integrations that Google lacks.
Now I happen to believe that Google has an advantage in points 1 and 2. 3 is unclear to me. On the whole I would say Google is better. But the flight booking example says little on its own.
As to #3, what useful integrations does Siri have that Google lacks? Not trying to debate, I am genuinely curious as I find that #3 is where, by and large, Google very far ahead of Siri.
For instance, anecdotally, my daughter had a friend over last night. I came home and asked what they had been doing. She told me they had been fooling around with Alexa and Google. I asked her what she thought. She told me that Alexa wasn't very smart, but not nearly as dumb as Siri and that Google is a lot smarter than both. If a 12 year old can spot how lacking Siri is when compared to the competition, then Apple has a major problem.
For instance, anecdotally, my daughter had a friend over last night. I came home and asked what they had been doing. She told me they had been fooling around with Alexa and Google. I asked her what she thought. She told me that Alexa wasn't very smart, but not nearly as dumb as Siri and that Google is a lot smarter than both. If a 12 year old can spot how lacking Siri is when compared to the competition, then Apple has a major problem.
I would say that when people "mess around" with voice assistants, they usually ask trivia questions. Google is unquestionably the leader here, for obvious reasons.
But I've found that the way these assistants are actually used day-to-day is less triva and information queries, and more actual commands. E.g. "Send a text to my husband," "play the latest Kanye album", "remind me to pickup the cake when I leave work," "set a 5 minute timer," "Give me directions to Jake's house," "call Dad," etc. For tasks like this, Siri and Google are similar.
For the record, I don't disagree with your conclusion that Google is ahead. I just think pointing to one specific capability is a weak way of analyzing the voice assistants for two reasons: it's not a comprehensive comparison of capabilities, and capabilities are only one aspect of voice assistant performance anyway.
Amazon Echo is meant to be spoken to from anywhere in a room though, from meters away. It needs those microphones to be sensitive enough to hear what people are saying from 360 degrees over several meters.
The iPhone is like 1-2 feet from my mouth when I speak into it. It understands what I say when I talk into the phone it just doesn't do a whole lot with what I say that's the problem, she's dumb as a plank but she can hear me just fine.
Siri has been dead last almost since its inception (yeah I realize it was first to market, hence "almost"). I use it for just the incredibly basic tasks of setting alarms and reminders. Beyond that I can do everything faster and with a great deal more accuracy manually.
I welcome sweeping improvements to Siri but I enter with a great deal of skepticism. I feel like we've been promised "this time Siri will be amazing" every other year at this point. I'll believe it when I see it.
Again, as a way to set a quick reminder or timer it is fine. But others are starting their cars with a digital assistant and in over here unable to check movie times with any consistency.
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I agree there are obvious product differences not the least of which being echo lives and dies by its ability to act in voice commands. But still, Siri could (and should) be many magnitudes better than it is a this point. We have almost had Siri on our idevices longer than we haven't!
I welcome sweeping improvements to Siri but I enter with a great deal of skepticism. I feel like we've been promised "this time Siri will be amazing" every other year at this point. I'll believe it when I see it.
Again, as a way to set a quick reminder or timer it is fine. But others are starting their cars with a digital assistant and in over here unable to check movie times with any consistency.
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I feel like with the advent of "Hey Siri" itnisninllied we should be there with our phones too. I mean, that feature often doesn't work for me at my desk in an early silent room.
I agree there are obvious product differences not the least of which being echo lives and dies by its ability to act in voice commands. But still, Siri could (and should) be many magnitudes better than it is a this point. We have almost had Siri on our idevices longer than we haven't!
If you're having trouble getting your phone to recognize "hey Siri", try retraining it in the Siri settings. When doing the training, say "hey Siri" with different intonations, volumes, etc. I've found that if you just say "hey Siri" the same way every time during training, then it'll only trigger when you say it in just that intonation. If you vary how you say it during training then it works much better.
I've retrained it multiple times. Unfortunately it's just not very good unless the phone is right next to me and it's very quiet.
On the other hand "ok google" has been flawless for me. I don't use it too much since it's a work phone.
I appreciate the tips. Believe me I'd love for Siri to be of morenuse to me. Unfortunately it just seems lacking compared to the competition. To be fair I can't compare newer hardware. I'm still on a 6s plus. But I feel that, after five years, it should be pretty bullet proof. Or st least closer to the competition. IME not even close.
Bummer. I've been able to make it work myself, but Apple is way too cautious on this. They should loosen the algorithm to err on the side of triggering rather than not triggering. It's not the end of the world if someone else accidentally triggers my Siri every once in a while.
I guess a better version of Siri could be limited to the newest hardware due to better and more microphones. They need to get some better noise cancellation and better recording capabilities for video.
I wish she could understand and distinguish between my voice and what's playing in the background but that would need way more processing power and much smarter A.I. Would be so nice talking swedish with Siri and still have the stereo blasting some song in the background and Siri just skipping all the English words in the background.
I wish she could understand and distinguish between my voice and what's playing in the background but that would need way more processing power and much smarter A.I. Would be so nice talking swedish with Siri and still have the stereo blasting some song in the background and Siri just skipping all the English words in the background.
I would agree with a lot of the comments seeking improvements to Siri. There is a lot of development required by Apple in this software. With the arrival of Siri on the MacBook 2016 I don't see why any improvements should be confined to the iPhone alone. Or maybe the iPhone is just an initial device being used for testing & development of Siri?
Siri is so goddamn stupid compared to Google Assistant. It's unreal how far ahead Google is in this field.
Like yeah, I'm excited for Siri 2.0 and all, but I just can't see Apple beating Google at this game. They've shown repeatedly over the past few years that they're just not great at software anymore.
Like yeah, I'm excited for Siri 2.0 and all, but I just can't see Apple beating Google at this game. They've shown repeatedly over the past few years that they're just not great at software anymore.