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How Apple Approached Developing Siri's Personality

Just had to ask this

What happened to HAL9000
 

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mikerudolph22 said:
I was so excited to see how well this integrated into the iPhone since the app is pretty great. My first impression of Siri is pretty awful...I understand it's in "Beta" but during the release they said that's only because it isn't available in all languages. "Siri can only get better" I should sure hope so.

I don't have an accent - though I don't often spend time practicing non-regional diction.

Geofences:
NONE of the geofenced reminders I set worked. When I set a reminder "high priority" to "get fuel for my car" when I leave a certain address to test it out, the reminder NEVER came. "Remind me to pick up the groceries when I get home" - nothing. My address is set in preferences. When I say to "Remind me to pick up my suit when I leave here (and it finds my exact current location on the map)" - I get nothing. Yes, the location services are on in Reminders, and wifi is on and I have a GPS lock.

Siri wish list (or more aptly labeled "Why didn't you think of this list?":
- ME: "Create contact" - SIRI:"sorry I can't create contacts"

- ME: Remind me to ___ when I arrive at the National Cathedral in Washington DC; SIRI: "I don't know what you mean by "when I arrive at the national cathedral in washington dc" "You can be reminded at a time, or when you leave or arrive somewhere. When would you like me to remind you" (oh, is that right?)

- ME: "Remind me to pick up my tux when I leave Singleton Lodge." (actual Siri translation: "Remind me to pick up tux when you see me looking up women online.") WTF?!?:eek:

- ME: "Tweet that so far Siri is not that good.: SIRI: "Sorry Mike, I can't help you with Twitter." (so much for Twitter integration. Maybe it's too smart? Don't count on it.)

- ME: "Turn off Bluetooth." SIRI: "Sorry I don't understand 'Turn off Bluetooth'"
-ME: "Turn off Wi-Fi." SIRI: "I don't see any Wi-Fi hotspots. Sorry about that."
-ME: "Where am I now?" (I'm at my apartment with WiFi turned on). SIRI:"Here's your current location" (it puts a red pin as my current location 0.7 MILES away from there the BLUE CURRENT LOCATION DOT is on the map! GPS is locked to my location but Siri can't figure it out). 5 minutes later I try again, it figures out that I am now actually at home - and it doesn't remind me to blog that Siri Sucks. Too bad I'm already halfway through the review, so thanks anyway, Siri.

I have a lot of trouble believing these glowing reviews saying that Siri is blowing people away. This is nothing better than the free Siri app I've had for almost a year now.

Anyone on the fence about getting the 4S, I would strongly recommend against getting it unless you have the 3GS or lower. I had 3GS so it's still an upgrade for me, but Siri is nothing to write home about (unless it's a poor review). Just get the free Siri app - it does everything except the integration thing, which as you can see isn't that great.
Click to expand...

It's a beta, Mike. And YMMV; lots of people are quite happy with it.
 
motulist said:
Siri is one of Apple's topmost major priorities right now. I've hear that out of ALL the project teams at Apple, right now the siri team has the highest number of people assigned to work on it. This is almost definitely just the very basic beginning for siri, and very soon siri will almost definitely be expanding it's capabilities. 3rd party app integration is a foregone conclusion, it's definitely coming, the only question is when.
Click to expand...

Hopefully soon.

I should note that the example functions are great (minus geofencing). Just not much more than the Siri app already does.
 
asked Siri, "where can I get a hooker?"...funny response

I have the version of Siri that has been available for quite a while via the Apps store. I was curious how it would respond to some more "unusual" questions, just to see if it understood the question.... so I asked it, "where can I get a hooker?".

It gave me a list of local escort services, then it added it's own comment,

"Don't worry, I won't tell".

I thought that was pretty amusing....that they had it programmed for that response. It's pretty amazing the things it comes up with.
 
mikerudolph22 said:
I was so excited to see how well this integrated into the iPhone since the app is pretty great. My first impression of Siri is pretty awful...I understand it's in "Beta" but during the release they said that's only because it isn't available in all languages. "Siri can only get better" I should sure hope so.

I don't have an accent - though I don't often spend time practicing non-regional diction.

Geofences:
NONE of the geofenced reminders I set worked. When I set a reminder "high priority" to "get fuel for my car" when I leave a certain address to test it out, the reminder NEVER came. "Remind me to pick up the groceries when I get home" - nothing. My address is set in preferences. When I say to "Remind me to pick up my suit when I leave here (and it finds my exact current location on the map)" - I get nothing. Yes, the location services are on in Reminders, and wifi is on and I have a GPS lock.

Siri wish list (or more aptly labeled "Why didn't you think of this list?":
- ME: "Create contact" - SIRI:"sorry I can't create contacts"

- ME: Remind me to ___ when I arrive at the National Cathedral in Washington DC; SIRI: "I don't know what you mean by "when I arrive at the national cathedral in washington dc" "You can be reminded at a time, or when you leave or arrive somewhere. When would you like me to remind you" (oh, is that right?)

- ME: "Remind me to pick up my tux when I leave Singleton Lodge." (actual Siri translation: "Remind me to pick up tux when you see me looking up women online.") WTF?!?:eek:

- ME: "Tweet that so far Siri is not that good.: SIRI: "Sorry Mike, I can't help you with Twitter." (so much for Twitter integration. Maybe it's too smart? Don't count on it.)

- ME: "Turn off Bluetooth." SIRI: "Sorry I don't understand 'Turn off Bluetooth'"
-ME: "Turn off Wi-Fi." SIRI: "I don't see any Wi-Fi hotspots. Sorry about that."
-ME: "Where am I now?" (I'm at my apartment with WiFi turned on). SIRI:"Here's your current location" (it puts a red pin as my current location 0.7 MILES away from there the BLUE CURRENT LOCATION DOT is on the map! GPS is locked to my location but Siri can't figure it out). 5 minutes later I try again, it figures out that I am now actually at home - and it doesn't remind me to blog that Siri Sucks. Too bad I'm already halfway through the review, so thanks anyway, Siri.

I have a lot of trouble believing these glowing reviews saying that Siri is blowing people away. This is nothing better than the free Siri app I've had for almost a year now.

Anyone on the fence about getting the 4S, I would strongly recommend against getting it unless you have the 3GS or lower. I had 3GS so it's still an upgrade for me, but Siri is nothing to write home about (unless it's a poor review). Just get the free Siri app - it does everything except the integration thing, which as you can see isn't that great.
Click to expand...

I only agree if you are upgrading for Siri alone. The A5 and upgraded camera is a big upgrade over the iPhone 4.

Check out how much better the camera is in low light:

http://joped.com/2011/10/iphone-4-vs-iphone-4s-low-light-test/
 
hansende said:
Siri has the same thinking ability as a rock. All of "her" spoken language is preprogrammed. Her attitude is preprogrammed. Humans are at least 1000 years from developing anything close to actual thinking. The human brain has evolved over millions of years.
Click to expand...

There is legitimate AI involved with Siri, but it is related to her natural language understanding capabilities, not really in the exact responses she gives.

You can find out more about all of the research behind it here:

https://pal.sri.com/Plone/framework
 
I like the humor Apple gave Siri

The Easter Eggs thread is providing some great entertainment.

I have found Siri to be amazingly accurate and fun to play with

Last night Siri blew me away when I said "Add oatmeal to my groceries note".

But Siri has made the phone "fun" and truly a conversation piece

Has anyone told Siri "May the force be with you" and if so, what was the response?
Click to expand...


You guys have too much time on your hands (and too much money in your pockets it seems)

Siri is quite the novelty but does it do anything useful? Like:

* Read my email while I drive or...
* Launch Applications
 
Tastic Bycrom said:
Siri's neat, but still lacking a in music control IMO. I like to listen to entire albums by an artist. For the previous voice control and sadly for Siri as well, I have to know the exact name of an album and hope it's unique among album names on my iPod.

What I want is "Play an album by Foo Fighters" and a response to be "Which album? Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape, There Is Nothing Left to Lose,...." then "That one!"
Click to expand...

I asked it to play an artist and it just goes ahead and plays a random track from them even though i have 2 albums of them. not sure if it'll change with more albums.

Only problem i've had with music is it won't skip tracks when asked to play artists, it knows what i said but it just starts the current song from the beginning, like there is only 1 track. Playlists work fine though.
 
Steve's Barber said:
You guys have too much time on your hands (and too much money in your pockets it seems)

Siri is quite the novelty but does it do anything useful? Like:

* Read my email while I drive or...
* Launch Applications
Click to expand...

That's another thing I tried to see if it would read me my email. SIRI: "I found 24 emails. I can't read them to you. Sorry about that."

"Open App Evernote" Siri: Opens a new note and types in "Open app ever".
"Open App Angry Birds: Siri: "Ever so sorry Mike...I'm not allowed to do that."

This is surely coming though...
 
APlotdevice said:
Tricorder? Uh, apparently Siri isn't a real trek fan. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Oh, boy. I swear everyone: most Star Trek fans aren't as humorless as this one.

Look, we--Star Trek fans, that is--all know that transporters typically lock on to the communicator, not the tricorder.

*But*...

It's a JOKE, man... and Tricorders are funnier than communicators. Yeah, they just are. Get over it. It doesn't matter if it doesn't really make sense, it's still funnier with tricorder than communicator.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Where's Waldo?
 
mikerudolph22 said:
It just emptied my bank account!!!!! DUDE... :p

No it doesn't understand that. I don't know how to access the cache. Not sure if it even saves one.
Click to expand...

Thanks for trying that mike. If someone complains something does not work, that is what we say first, 'Clear your cache'.. I thought Apple may have put in an easter egg for that. ;)

btw, your complaints about this Siri not being that much more advanced than the Siri app is valid. It is better integrated with the phone itself with access to more apps on the phone. With Apple's resources and massive input data they are going to get, it WILL get better.

Your geofence problem, is that a SIRI problem or iOS 5 problem? Did you check if SIRI set the reminder properly? ( if there is a way to check.. I have not tried geofence based reminders in iOS5 on iPhone 4 yet )
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Then try going to Australia and asking "where is the nearest restaurant?"

Only to be told:

"Sorry I can only find places in the USA when you are speaking with a North American accent."

It has some not so funny responses that are just plain annoying and expose flaws with Siri.
 
Setting up REMINDERS with Siri works incredibly well....

REMIND me to pick up my laundry at 6 pm
REMIND me to do my bills tomorrow

etc, etc...

I set up numerous reminders with my blutooth while driving no problem...

try it!

ps: that is very useful ;-)

best,
SvK
 
Siri's been having trouble connecting to the network all day today and yesterday.... is this just me or is it happening to everyone?
 
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