Jacob Aron, technology reporter
For those hoping for an iPhone 5, Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event today might have been a disappointment. But the consumer electronics firm did grace the world with the new iPhone?4S, an overhaul from the iPhone?4 that also came with some breakthrough software in the form of the personal assistant program, Siri.
On stage at the event senior vice president of iPhone software Scott Forstall asked his phone: "What's the weather like today?" And Siri responded with the forecast.
That was just the beginning. Over the next few minutes, Forstall asked Siri to find him some Greek restaurants and arrange them by their ratings. He showed that Siri could set up business meetings, or search Wikipedia or search engine Wolfram Alpha - all by speaking to a phone in plain English, just as you would ask any human the same questions.
Such an apparent breakthrough in natural language processing promises to change the way we interact with our phones - say "find me a table at an Italian restaurant near my office for 7?pm" and Siri will get it done, even make you a reservation. Gizmodo likened this spooky level of personal service to the USS Enterprise's computer in Star Trek.
A rehearsed demo is all well and good, of course. But will it work as well as advertised in the real world? Google's Android supports voice commands such as sending a text message by speaking, but its performance is spotty at best.
But this is not Apple's first go-round with voice commands, or even Siri - the company released an early version of the software assistant in February last year. Now, powered by the iPhone?4S's faster A5 processor and integration with Apple's iCloud service, which processes voice commands on a remote server, the new and improved Siri does indeed look poised to raise the bar significantly. No word on whether Siri will also be available for the iPad?2 - which also sports an A5 processor - or Mac laptop and desktop systems.
Siri's roots can actually be traced back to 2003, when DARPA funded a research program called "Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes" or CALO. The intention was to create an automated assistant that could learn from the user and handle a variety of tasks. The project was lead by SRI International, a California based research institute - when it came to an end a number of people working on the CALO project founded Siri, and the company was snapped up by Apple.
Siri will come with support for English, French, and German at the start, with other languages to follow throughout the service's beta phase (not clear how it will handle strong accents, though). The assistant's voice recognition component is powered by software from Nuance, the company which also produces Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software for Windows PCs. Their software supports other languages, but voice is just one component. Siri relies on other online services such as Rotten Tomatoes for movies or OpenTable for making restaurant reservations, and many of these offer a limited or no experience outside of the US.
solon rhetoric npr supernova neil diamond obama approval rating saints
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.