Sonos is Working on Its Own Version of Siri

[EdT]

I don’t say this meanly but I don’t know anyone who uses voice assistants anymore.

When they first came out people were excited. Then it became a chore and they weren’t really improving. Still misunderstanding instructions. Still having a jerky response.

hen came bad stories that Amazon was sending recording snippets to real people to listen to them. Then people didn’t trust them anymore.

Then hacking, spying, Pegasus, ransomware, Facebook data all became bad stories.

I don’t think this damage can be fixed for a while. Maybe that’s good. Maybe we need to use our hands instead of asking a robot to do something. Maybe we need to talk to people more often again.

This post was too long to be haiku. My waifu is calling. She’s a real person.

I am old and set in my ways, and from working with a company that used collected data back in the stone ages (1980’s) I have a large distrust of any company that makes money selling your personal information being in any way protective of your privacy. But I also have nieces and nephews that have smart speakers and TV’s in their houses and they definitely voice command them to turn lights on or off or to open streaming service ‘X’ and watch some specific program and I am equally certain that information is all stored and linked to them personally. I don’t believe the claims that Google/Amazon/whatever Facebook is calling itself today make that they are not saving that data and directly linking it to specific people. And I include Apple among the privacy violators. People have consistently shown that accuracy in the response of the smart device is a LOT more important to them than their own privacy, and with Siri being the butt of jokes and derided for not being reliable at all I think that Apple has sold out.

People that gravitate to smart devices are more worried about whether it does what they just asked it and aren’t concerned about a company storing private information about them or that the smart device company sells that information to anyone who wants it.

The reason Alexa and Google and other voice hubs are so cheap isn’t because they make a lot of money selling the device but because they make a lot of money selling your habits to advertisers.

 

[bbodine]

I use Siri and Alexa all the time with that said there is no reason to have another new one. Can’t see the reason behind this

There are definitely reasons. All of the functionality of the Google and Alexa are not available on Sonos. Those companies are restricting certain features. I dont fault them for it as those things probably keep people buying their speakers. However, in order to get access to features like Drop In they have to build their own assistant. Drop In is the feature I missed the most when I got rid of the echos and went to Sonos. There are others as well that Alexa will tell me are not available on the device I am using. Google has broadcast which does work but the caveat is that it broadcasts to the entire house when using Sonos. Through the google home app I can target a specific speaker but can not find a way to do it on Sonos. Also broadcasting seems to constantly leave out a speaker here and there and it is always a different speaker it seems every time I use the feature.

 

[pilotpat]

One of the things that makes Siri and Google and Amazon effective is that they literally have hundreds of millions (nay, billions) of devices using their voice assistants, so they have the numbers necessary to improve their services. With such a relatively low volume of devices, I think it will be hard for Sonos to compete on quality.

Also, it seems like a weird thing from a financial and marketing standpoint. Unless it is demonstrably better, somehow, than Alexa or Google or Siri, it’s not gonna get anyone to buy a Sonos over another speaker. And to make it really good they will have to spend a ton of money and development. So it just kind of seems like one of those vanity projects that maybe might not have the best strategic underpinning.

Unless, somehow, it is noticeably better than the other voice assistance. If they could pull that off, it would be interesting. Anything shy of that seems like kind of a weird endeavor.

I think the thing here is that Sonos isn't really trying to compete with Siri, Google or Amazon. They are trying to find ways to make their products work better, and that's it. They have already said that Siri integration in its current form is a non starter because you have to buy a HomePod for it to work. Google and Amazon don't allow access to all of their functionality through the sonos app or speakers (Not to mention that whole patent lawsuit with google stuff, and possibly Amazon for the same thing in the future.). So if they want to make an assistant that works for music specifically, then add a few things for simple timers or whatever, I think they could make something great for their products. They aren't looking to do the things the other assistants do for smart home (answering trivia questions, checking the weather, sending text or making phone calls, turning lights on or off etc.) And since the data is processed on device and not sent anywhere, they can't data mine anything unless you give them permission to do it.

 

[MonkeyDavid]

If it has HomeKit integration (or at least the ability to control Hue lights) I could dump Alexa…

 

[2540497]

7 or 8 years on and voice assistants from Apple, Amazon and Google still aren’t perfect. Why bother!

 

[ponzicoinbro]

I don’t say this meanly, but that statement is unhinged from reality and almost the opposite of the truth. People literally use voice assistance billions of times a day.

You think that’s a big number when 50 million people can make 20 voice requests a day?

There are over a billion iPhone owners. The percentage of people not using voice assistants is much higher than those who do. Too many distrust issues and too much friction with bugs and delays and incorrect results. It’s not magic. It’s a crusty software that is very difficult to optimize after so many years.

 

[turbineseaplane]

7 or 8 years on and voice assistants from Apple, Amazon and Google still aren’t perfect. Why bother!

That's about where I've landed also

I find them all to be mostly questionable and only occasionally contextually useful.

I really hoped they'd all be way way better by now, but especially Siri.

 

[Zyphrax]

Weird decision. We don’t need another on top of Alexa, Google and Siri.

Instead I would like it if they would address customer feedback:

- I can use my Sonos as a Google assistant, but I’m not doing that because it only has one volume setting for both the assistant and regular audio

- The lowest volume setting isn’t low enough. At night I’d like to turn it down a bit, but the lower levels simply aren’t there. And yeah I know about the loudness boost.

- Compared to the built-in TV audio I feel that the volume is all over the place. Playing Spotify is normal, now suddenly Netflix is loud, I keep changing the volume a lot. They should be able to detect the decibels of the output and smarter adjust it.

Some of these issues can definitely be addressed by software.

 

[atomic.flip]

I don’t say this meanly but I don’t know anyone who uses voice assistants anymore.

When they first came out people were excited. Then it became a chore and they weren’t really improving. Still misunderstanding instructions. Still having a jerky response.

hen came bad stories that Amazon was sending recording snippets to real people to listen to them. Then people didn’t trust them anymore.

Then hacking, spying, Pegasus, ransomware, Facebook data all became bad stories.

I don’t think this damage can be fixed for a while. Maybe that’s good. Maybe we need to use our hands instead of asking a robot to do something. Maybe we need to talk to people more often again.

This post was too long to be haiku. My waifu is calling. She’s a real person.

Unfortunately the only voice assistant that is truly worth a damn is Google. And I truly dislike the quality of the speech so it’s a bit of an annoyance to hear it respond at times. But running home or office automation and even performing research (running voice queries) against Google assistant has been extremely productive and time saving while multitasking.

Siri and Alexa just don’t have the intelligence necessary to meet Google where it stands now and the lack of innovation or even iterative improvement from Apple vis a vis Siri is enough to make anyone discouraged at the prospect of anyone doing any better.

I just don’t see Sonos making it happen. Microsoft maybe with their acquisition of a major player in the voice / ai space a year ago. But there’s no sign they have decided to go down that route with them yet.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Unfortunately the only voice assistant that is truly worth a damn is Google. And I truly dislike the quality of the speech so it’s a bit of an annoyance to hear it respond at times. But running home or office automation and even performing research (running voice queries) against Google assistant has been extremely productive and time saving while multitasking.

Siri and Alexa just don’t have the intelligence necessary to meet Google where it stands now and the lack of innovation or even iterative improvement from Apple vis a vis Siri is enough to make anyone discouraged at the prospect of anyone doing any better.

I just don’t see Sonos making it happen. Microsoft maybe with their acquisition of a major player in the voice / ai space a year ago. But there’s no sign they have decided to go down that route with them yet.

I don’t know how many people here used OS 9 Classic but there was a voice assistant and dictation in there. The functions were simple but when you see it you realize how we haven’t progressed much in this area.

But maybe that’s a good thing. Most users have shunned using voice assistants, not only because of trust issues and bugs but also because not many people want to sit there like a vegetable. They want to open apps themselves, fill in notes themselves, check the weather themselves. We have a brain, hands, arms. We are a tool using species that derives stimulation and sometimes pleasure from interacting physically with tools. We can’t give these thing up to be like the sad man in Her.

 

[obezcinnet]

Another voice assistant? Isn't the market like saturated with them? Wouldn't it be cheaper to integrate a few and let people decide?

I think there is a major difference with this, on device processing. Siri/Alexa/Google doesn't have that and I can see why people might prefer this. I like the fact that Sonos is giving people an alternative if they have privacy concerns. They even created speakers without microphones on them (like arc SL). I understand most people don't care about having always listening google/amazon devices at their homes but it's a legit concern for some.

 

[sidewinder3000]

That’s statement isn’t really funny or true. Me and many millions of people use Siri every day and find it extremely helpful and productive.

I think you might be underestimating how much of a problem it is for Sonos to be relying on 3rd party voice assistants just to make their products work as well as those 3rd parties’ products. They have the data on how many Sonos users are using Alexa/Google for core functions, versus using the app or buttons on the device. Clearly that data is telling them something they need to react to.

I have faith they’ll be able to impress. All they need to do is optimise for finding and playing the right music you asked for. Not worrying about whether you just asked for game scores or movie tickets or setting a timer. The others are terrible at this. If Sonos can focus, set the right expectations, and use the data they’ll have from years of playlisting they could make their products significantly more friendly to use than they already are. For all those other voice assistant tasks, there’s no reason they couldn’t continue to forward Alexa requests to Amazon.

You’re right in that they probably do have internal data about the types of searches people are doing with the other assistants, and they know how satisfied/unsatisfied Sonos customers are with those searches, and that’s likely what’s driving them to create their own voice assistant. You’re also right in that the very focused functionality of a speaker company’s voice assistant will be exponentially easier to create than a comprehensive one like Alexa or Siri. I was being too broad in my assessment. Thanks for adding needed nuance.

Considering your insights, I’m now wondering: since Google makes android available for other companies to use and tweak as they please (like Samsung does), does Google also make Google Assistant available to other companies to use and modify as they please, or is that IP purely proprietary for Google alone?

 

[sidewinder3000]

You think that’s a big number when 50 million people can make 20 voice requests a day?

There are over a billion iPhone owners. The percentage of people not using voice assistants is much higher than those who do. Too many distrust issues and too much friction with bugs and delays and incorrect results. It’s not magic. It’s a crusty software that is very difficult to optimize after so many years.

I don’t have hard numbers on any of this stuff, and neither do you, so there’s no point in arguing about that. My point was simple: a ton of people use Siri every day, and do get considerable value from it. There are a lot of things Siri does really well.

As far as why Siri isn’t better, it’s hard for anyone without access to the base programming and code to know why. I’ve heard that initially it was because Apple wasn’t using the cloud to process requests as much as Google was. Later I heard that Apple had internal problems with their team, unable to achieve consensus on what approach to take, which caused it to stall for years. Whatever the cause is, I hope that Apple finally has a grip on it, and is planning on unveiling some huge changes to Siri at WWDC. My biggest gripe being that Siri isn’t a great listener. She speaks with an uncannily realistic human voice, but her comprehension seems to be far behind Google and Alexa. Dictating text is pretty shoddy, with no way to manually teach Siri or help her better understand you.

I know this kinda stuff is said a lot, but I imagine that of Steve Jobs were alive (hearing the criticism of Siri and seeing how badly it had fallen behind the others in terms of verbal comprehension) he would be beyond livid, and bring considerable resources to bear to not just fix it, but to make it the best VA in the industry. I have no idea how Tim Cook is currently handling the dysfunction of Siri, but I hope that he’s livid too, and that huge changes are just around the corner…

(Holding breath).

 

[kc9hzn]

You’re right in that they probably do have internal data about the types of searches people are doing with the other assistants, and they know how satisfied/unsatisfied Sonos customers are with those searches, and that’s likely what’s driving them to create their own voice assistant. You’re also right in that the very focused functionality of a speaker company’s voice assistant will be exponentially easier to create than a comprehensive one like Alexa or Siri. I was being too broad in my assessment. Thanks for adding needed nuance.

Considering your insights, I’m now wondering: since Google makes android available for other companies to use and tweak as they please (like Samsung does), does Google also make Google Assistant available to other companies to use and modify as they please, or is that IP purely proprietary for Google alone?

I’d imagine Google Assistant is largely proprietary. It’s probably not like Android, where you can fork it and create an entirely new experience, as Google Assistant seems to count as a Google service running on Android (those typically aren’t open sourced). Besides, making it freely modifiable would run counter to Google’s profit mechanism when it comes to Google Assistant. Remember, requests to it hit Google’s servers, costing them money in maintaining those servers, while Google doesn’t really have much of anything to do with Android forks once you’ve forked the repo (let alone ongoing monetary costs). And Google makes money from advertising, and its advertising is dependent on sucking up user data, aggregating it, and slicing and dicing it into a variety of metrics that are useful for keeping you on Google services (such as prolonging your YouTube viewing session) and helping advertisers target you with ads.

 

[DotCom2]

Installed the update today. Works GREAT!

 

[rhett7660]

they want to be independent and avoid relying too much to gatekeepers, ie Google & Apple

You forgot one... Amazon Alexa, unless you are throwing that under Google's...