Siri on iOS Answered 78.5% of Queries Correctly in Latest Test, Trailing Google Assistant at 85.5%

[ArtOfWarfare]

I feel like this figure is hugely misleading. A 100% is almost meaningless. It certainly wouldn't signal the be-all end-all of AI.

They should be subjecting this to a Turing test. Don't compare these devices to each other. Give me a competent human secretary with a computer with internet access and compare what that human can understand and respond to vs what these devices can.

And I think you'll find the machine is somewhere below 1%.

 

[TwoBytes]

What skewed results - this highly depends on the questions asked which Siri can't deal with vs other assistants..

 

[naturalstar]

That’s a ‘C’.

Keep studying, Siri

 

[PickUrPoison]

So I’m asking it wrong

So you didn’t read the article

 

[PeteS1963]

Personally I find Siri on my Apple Watch more accurate than on my iPhone or iPad. I find it really useful there. My experience of Alexa is that overall it’s not as good as Siri, so it reflects these results. I don’t have Google Assitant or Cortana so can’t comment on those.

 

[Mike Haas]

I've never played with Siri or Google. Even alone, I just can't bring myself to talk to my computer.

 

[motm95]

I'm curious as to how often Siri is "updated" - are there only improvements when iOS is updated or are there continual, incremental background updates -- in other words, the "machine learning." Is that happening all the time or only on OS updates?

 

[DNichter]

Siri is getting smarter!

…. and I don't understand why Alexa is so over-rated. Both Google and Siri perform better than Alexa… and yet Alexa gets the lion's share of the hype.

Echo's are very cheap and have been around the longest so they are ubiquitous when it comes to smart speakers. I had 3 and I just tossed them in the trash and replaced them with 2 HomePod's.

 

[citysnaps]

That number feels about right based on personal experience. And it's higher for when requests are music-related.

Honestly, though, I have no interest communicating with any digital assistant. As a human being, that's just not very appealing.

The exception is bringing up music in my car or on HomePod. That's where Siri shines.

 

[bbednarz]

What kinds of questions are you guys asking these things? Occasionally I will have to repeat myself with both Alexa and Siri, but I would say 95% of the things I ask or tell it to do it has no problem performing. To be clear, I am only asking them to play music, podcasts, HomeKit/smart home things, timers, reminders, weather and if I am letting the dogs outside I will sometimes ask either of them to tell me a joke while I wait.

 

[truthertech]

So I’m asking it wrong

Looks like you didn't read the article or didn't understand the charts.

 

[jjudson]

Not sure why this would be a surprise. Google OWNS the information search world. What's interesting is that they're as low as they are. I would think they'd be in the high 90s.

 

[truthertech]

Compared to what? According to these results, Siri is a little or a lot better than both Alexa and Cortana. Siri is not quite as Good as Google Assistant but these tests are important because they invalidate all hyperbolic claims that Siri is worthless and/or Google Assistant is leaps and bounds ahead. We all have the feeling that Siri has fallen behind so these numbers seem to validate that. They do not validate opinions that claim Siri is either far ahead or way behind the competition.

Please stop confusing him with facts. He has a "feeling" that whatever Apple does is bad.

 

[Heineken]

Personal Data mining is irrelevant.

Siri still sucks.

Ok. Have a nice day.

 

[lec0rsaire]

78.5%! Siri passed! No assistant left behind!

 

[Lankyman]

Absolutely not. Sure whiners will always say that.
Siri was and it is great, few years ago was impossible to dream of speak to your device. I use Siri about every hour for work.
Internet forums users tend to bash everything. Siri also is available on many languages and it is a big plus.
Cortana is quite bad for example, want to bash something? Cortana is there.

Where Google really starts to pull ahead though is in contextual answers. You can for example ask it about x country then just as follow it up with 'how many live there'. Google impressively get's this right again and again, something the other assistants struggled with. It has a far better understanding of language and how we phrase things which the others do not.

 

[TechZeke]

Siriously still bad.

I mean, at least Siri has surpassed previous overall Google assistant levels. People were touting Google Assistant a year ago, so that metric is bad now? Siri seems to be a solid 2nd, and this after all moaning about Siri being the worst compared all others.

 

[spazzcat]

And yet Siri still cannot effectively do voice to text without messing up 75% of the time.

I voice to text all the time while driving, I say she gets it wrong maybe 1 out 10 times.

 

[Lankyman]

Echo's are very cheap and have been around the longest so they are ubiquitous when it comes to smart speakers. I had 3 and I just tossed them in the trash and replaced them with 2 HomePod's.

That's not very eco friendly. Why didn't you recycle them or perhaps donate them to a charity?
[doublepost=1532526501][/doublepost]

I voice to text all the time while driving, I say she gets it wrong maybe 1 out 10 times.

I hope I never encounter you on the road whilst I am driving given you're so distracted.

 

[babelia]

I can assure in Spain’s Spanish is pathetic. One out of six gets it right. Now... Google’s assistant is something else... nine out of ten matches, and in both languages (English and Spanish)

Apple is way behind with Siri in voice assistance in relation to Google.

 

[now i see it]

Trying to quantify the innacurracy of Siri is pointless. Using Siri or not comes down to personal experience. Enough misses and worthless responses usually leads the user to completely disable it in Settings, never to use it again.

 

[BuffaloTF]

I can't comment on accuracy in answering questions... but I can absolutely agree with the findings that it performs better with home automation tasks. It usually goes something like this -- Alexa, turn on accent lights. Alexa's lights start spinning and spinning, me knowing full well what the answer is going to be. "Sorry, accent lights are not responding. Please check them and try again." So, I've improved my own response time and no longer wait, while it's spinning in circles, I go - hey Siri, turn on accent lights. And before Alexa responds with her negative, I get light and "The accent lights are on."

If only they'd let it talk to my Wink Hub... I'd use it more and have to power-cycle sh** less.

 

[groadyho]

to me it isn't about just simple commands, it is what can she do. this is where Google AI and Alexa are far ahead.

 

[Novus John]

Looks like you didn't read the article or didn't understand the charts.

I'm sorry, I didn't get that.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

It seems like they need to break these tests up into the component categories and then test them on each platform's native device. You can't get an direct comparison of Siri and Alexa for example when you have 20% of your test dedicated to controlling the phone and both are being run on iPhone. Likewise, testing Alexa on Echo and having a portion of the test being focused to phone functions (Alexa call so-and-so) wouldn't work well either much like the HomePod was dinged in the previous comparison for lack of phone functionality even though it isn't a phone and wasn't a failing of the AI. In any case, impressive improvements by both Siri and Google Assistant. It mirrors my anecdotal experiences too that Siri controls my devices well but is spotty in terms of answering general questions (I don't order things via voice so I can't comment on that, seems a very Amazon thing to do).