Samsung Acquires Viv, the AI Assistant From the Creators of Siri

[Defthand]

Viv's advice to Note owners: "DROP AND ROLL!"
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In the mean time, I'm struggling to get Siri to do the most basic things. It feels like she's getting more stupider by the day.

Siri has frustrated me relentlessly—once to the point that I almost threw my phone out the car window. It has improved noticeably since the new iOS release.

One thing that is handicapping Siri is the device's microphone. This is especially apparent in a moving car with a window open or The radio playing. If I bother to silence the environment and hold the phone close, Siri is much more reliable, especially with my southern accent.

 

[Wellconnectedlife]

I have been Apple enthusiast for 30+ years, but their focus on AI has clearly died. Siri was great, but more often she let's me down with botched calendar entries, misspellings and stall outs. Sometimes I think I'd be better off with a See 'n Say from the '80s.

This Independent Apple Specialist says, "Boooooo."

Come on Apple.

 

[LordVic]

Sounds like Viv owners realised without being part of one of the major players and having their tech imbedded into existing software is likely aa better financial move, than to try and convince users to use a 3rd party AI product. And when it comes to those companies who might be willing to pay, and actually use their technologies, that can integrate it into a first party solution, the pickings are slim.

Apple already has Siri, and given the history between these guys and Apple, it was likely the last place they'd return.
Google has it's own AI and platform, that is arguably the leader in this space.

That really only leaves Samsung, who could and will likely use ti to help bolster their s-Voice, and s-planner implementations as their own first party AI solution.

 

[Freida]

so let me get this straight - the talent that created Siri was in Apple's possession for 2 years before they left. So, Apple wasn't able to keep them (weird). They then go and create something good and again they get noticed.
So how come that Apple is not on the receiving end? They must really pissed them off with their bureaucracy if they didn't wanna stay there. Weird

 

[Black Belt]

And so much for Viv. Your future just went up in flames.

 

[Rob_2811]

I really hope they will build their own OS because in 3-4 years time (once my iphone 6s will die) i am not planning on buying a new apple phone. So i hope there will be another OS option out there other than Android and Windoze. Apple has too much "courage" for my taste at this point.

It'll be interesting if they do. I'll be honest one of the big things that keeps me on iOS is my distaste for Google and some of their practices if there was a viable third option that might change things. It would have to be done well though.

I'm honestly surprised they still bother with Android given the market share that they have.

 

[jimbobb24]

Apple should buy Hound. Its pretty smart at understanding more complicated inquires but also remembering what you were just asking. Siri gets confused if the conversation strings along.

 

[danakin]

Maybe they'll call it IRIS

Siri backwards...

 

[bpcookson]

I love seeing anything new about advances in AI and relevant tech but I'm not yet convinced that voice is the correct interface. It's still great to see it being developed and we'll need this piece of the puzzle for "omnics" to eventually be a thing, but I can't help thinking the voice interface is a bit of a "cart before the horse" scenario.

 

[LordVic]

I really hope they will build their own OS because in 3-4 years time (once my iphone 6s will die) i am not planning on buying a new apple phone. So i hope there will be another OS option out there other than Android and Windoze. Apple has too much "courage" for my taste at this point.

Samsung has their own OS already, it's called Tizen.

They tried in the distant pass to make it their phone OS, but lack fo support, and momentum made them redirect it's uses. It can still be found on their smart TV's and appliances, and is the OS on the Gear S2 and S3 smart watches.

I doubt we'll see it appear on anything other than the most extreme budget phone, just mainly due to the lack of Google/Android integration, and the requirements for tizen specific apps.

 

[deckard666]

I wish my life was that interesting and time poor that some phone based AI would make my life super but hey if its a point of differentiation from the other Sara, Tarquin or what the hell the others are called then I am all for it...

 

[WigWag Workshop]

Siri works 99% of the time for me lately. I can tell how it has really improved, since it was available.

 

[theheadguy]

Who said Apple was innovating? Is reading comprehension a challenge for you, or can you not even take a joke?

I can take a joke, I just prefer good ones. Yours was typical fanboy trash. They both bought similar AI companies. Hilarious.

 

[aloshka]

Is anyone paying attention at Apple anymore?

Probably the millions that bought iPhone 7s and 7 pluses, the investors, an insanely large apple fanbase, majority of competitors, most tech bloggers, vloggers with simple iPhone 7 videos that are in the 3-4millions views, FBI, congress, DOJ and even came up a few times by our fearless awesome presidential candidates. I guess a few folks, maybe... you know, not a lot.. Most probably think it's a fruit company.

Thats great. I personally think Apple should kill off Siri brandname - its become a joke seriously in comparison to Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant! They should rebrand it along with AI capabilities and just call it the Apple Assistant.

I don't like the name Siri. What would you call it/her/him? And are they all female?

Does anyone use siri for anything other than setting a timer?
I wish OSX and IOS had a windows like feature installer/remover. Siri would be toast!

Nope. I know people swear by it, I've asked a lot of folks I know and pretty much all say the same thing. They use her to start timers or add "xxxx" to my "xxxx" list. The voice dictation on the watch, however, is used a lot.

A part of me wonders if this race for AI is actually stupid and some weird marketing hype. Does anyone truly want a computer to completely know everything about them? Your email gets hacked and you freak out because so much of you is exposed. What if your personal AI bot was hacked? We are fighting privacy issues, yet an AI would be worthless without knowing everything about you. And honestly, do we all truly need an "assistant"? No matter how smart the AI is, it cannot predict that today instead of going to work, I decided to go to check out a motorcycle. And knowing traffic on the way, would have been priceless. But the AI would only know my repetitive tasks and seeing my browser history isn't enough to understand what i want and I don't need another thing that I constantly have to talk to and explain and teach, and instruct in order for it to once in a while, save me 15 seconds by telling me something useful that is not advertising for a new restaurant or place to have drinks, and I don't even drink. When it knows my work schedule, that's useless as I don't really need an assistant for daily repetitive tasks which is what these AI bots so far are really good at. Not ranting, I know some of you really use Siri, but I do wonder, how much of Siri is actually being used. Is set timer, add to list, get directions, or wikipedia (wolfram whatever) searches for majority of the usage? Is the vision for AI kind of lie and we don't actually want it?

They tried in the distant pass to make it their phone OS, but lack fo support, and momentum made them redirect it's uses. It can still be found on their smart TV's and appliances, and is the OS on the Gear S2 and S3 smart watches.

I think no matter how good Tizen is no mass third party app support means it's dead. Yes, currently there are thousands of developers for samsung watches, etc, but that's not enough. There are more windows developers, and yet the win 10 phone market is dead and probably will stay dead for a while.

 

[LordVic]

I think no matter how good Tizen is no mass third party app support means it's dead. Yes, currently there are thousands of developers for samsung watches, etc, but that's not enough. There are more windows developers, and yet the win 10 phone market is dead and probably will stay dead for a while.

I tend to agree. We've seen some very big companies already try for a "3rd" OS player, with absolutely no success. Blackberry couldn't manage, despite years of legacy developers. Microsoft couldn't do it, despite their army of developers. We've seen Tizen already fail once before in this space, and we've seen other small players unable to crack into the market at all, such as Ubuntu and linux.

as much as I'd lvoe to see more OS players, those OS's require at this point feature parity on launch, and strong 3rd party App support. With Google and Apple's dominant position, liklihood of a new player in the space, right now, is not likely.

 

[sir1963nz]

Or activate the new fire suspression system!

Ore get it totally wrong when watching the movie "Fantastic 4"
As soon as Johnny Storm yells "Flame on" you're screwed.

 

[alexgowers]

Make AI; Siri... Sell it
Make New AI; VIV... Sell it
Make New AI: .....Sell it

They must be balls deep in dosh already.

 

[Macyourdayy]

Samsung has acquired Viv, the AI assistant co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, reports TechCrunch. The trio left Apple in 2012 and founded Viv. Viv will continue to operate as an independent company.

Viv has enhanced contextual understanding thanks to "dynamic program generation," which means that Viv can understand the intent of a user's queries and self-code responses on the fly. Viv can understand context and stack multiple queries on top of each other. For instance, at TechCrunch's Disrupt NY event last year, Kittlaus was able to ask Viv whether it was raining in Seattle a couple days prior, following up with whether it'll be warmer than 70-degrees near Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow.

Kittlaus tells TechCrunch that the reason it sold to Samsung was ubiquity. The company ships 500 million devices a year, he explained, which gives Viv a large distribution network. On the other hand, the acquisition gives Samsung its own AI assistant that can go toe-to-toe with Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa.

Samsung says that while the acquisition was done by its mobile team, the company sees the benefits to multiple product categories. "From our perspective and from the client's perspective, the interest and the power of this really comes from taking advantage of the Samsung scale overall, as well as the richness of the touch points we have with consumers." Viv's technology may eventually work its way into Samsung's non-mobile devices, like washing machines, refrigerators and TVs.

Advanced AI assistants have become a focus amongst Apple and its rivals recently. In May, it was reported that Apple was planning on introducing a next-gen natural language API in its rumored Amazon Echo competitor. The technology behind the API is the work of VocalIQ, a natural language outfit purchased by Apple in October 2015. The API has the ability to do "session-based" contextual responses similar to Viv.

Article Link: Samsung Acquires Viv, the AI Assistant From the Creators of Siri

[doublepost=1475787161][/doublepost]Should be interesting, especially considering their unusual interpretation of burner phone.

 

[freepomme]

Which is...?

Made it not work.

 

[ErikGrim]

The interesting part here is Dag's rationalisation that they needed "ubiquity". You WERE at Apple!

 

[Justim]

*intense cussing*

 

[Abazigal]

so let me get this straight - the talent that created Siri was in Apple's possession for 2 years before they left. So, Apple wasn't able to keep them (weird). They then go and create something good and again they get noticed.
So how come that Apple is not on the receiving end? They must really pissed them off with their bureaucracy if they didn't wanna stay there. Weird

My guess is that Apple's stance on privacy might have dissuaded a lot of people from working with them on AI. There seems to be this assumption that in order to succeed with AI, you essentially need to surrender all your data and privacy.

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Apple seem hellbent on wanting to protect our privacy regardless of the cost, and it may have made working on AI a much more frustrating process. Probably easier to work with Facebook or Google or start your own company.
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Does anyone use siri for anything other than setting a timer?
I wish OSX and IOS had a windows like feature installer/remover. Siri would be toast!

Set alarms. Check the time. Dictate messages. Make quick calculations. Play music. Don't use Siri all that much either, but it's handy when I do use it.

 

[ds2000]

Set alarms. Check the time. Dictate messages. Make quick calculations. Play music. Don't use Siri all that much either, but it's handy when I do use it.

Most of this could be more or less done with the pre-siri voice control. While I'm not disagreeing with you, Siri seems to have not progressed in years.

 

[Abazigal]

Most of this could be more or less done with the pre-siri voice control. While I'm not disagreeing with you, Siri seems to have not progressed in years.

I dunno. What sort of advanced Siri commands do you have in mind?

 

[Otaviano]

Good move for Samsung. Not at all surprising news after Google's announcement earlier in the week. More than ever Samsung needs to see if they can float without Google.