Vratislav Holub The voice assistant Siri has been an integral part of Apple operating systems for several years. With its help, we can control our Apple products with just our voice, without having to pick up the device at all. In an instant, we can send text messages/iMessages, create reminders, set alarms and timers, ask about the location of a parked car, the weather forecast, call anyone immediately, control music, and the like.
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Although Siri has been a part of Apple products for quite a few years, the truth is that Apple was not behind its birth at all. Apple, led by Steve Jobs, bought Siri in 2010 and integrated it into iOS a year later. Since then, he has been involved in its development and direction. Let's therefore shed some light on the very birth of Siri and how it subsequently came into Apple's hands.
The birth of the voice assistant Siri
In general, a voice assistant is a rather huge project that uses a number of modern technologies, led by machine learning and neural networks. That is precisely why several different entities participated in it. Siri was thus created as an independent project under SRI International, with the knowledge from the research of the CALO project being a major support. The latter focused on the functioning of artificial intelligence (AI) and tried to integrate a number of AI technologies into so-called cognitive assistants. The literally giant CALO project was created under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which falls under the United States Department of Defense.
In this way, the so-called core of the Siri voice assistant was created. Subsequently, it was still necessary to add voice recognition technology, which for a change was provided by the company Nuance Communications, which directly specializes in technologies related to speech and voice. It's quite funny that the company itself did not even know about providing a voice recognition engine, and neither did Apple when it bought Siri. Nuance CEO Paul Ricci first admitted this during a tech conference in 2011.
Acquisition by Apple
As we mentioned above, Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, bought the voice assistant Siri in 2010. But it must have been many years before a similar gadget. In 1987, the Cupertino company showed the world something interesting video lesson, which showed the concept of the Knowledge Navigator feature. Specifically, it was a digital personal assistant, and overall I could easily compare it to Siri. By the way, at that time the aforementioned Jobs did not even work at Apple. In 1985, he left the company due to internal disputes and created his own company, NeXT computer. On the other hand, it is possible that Jobs was working on this idea even before he left, but he could not bring it to completion until more than 20 years later.
Today's Siri
Siri has undergone a huge evolution since its first version. Today, this Apple voice assistant can do much more and more or less ensures the aforementioned voice control of our Apple devices. Likewise, of course, it has no problem with managing a smart home and overall simplifying our daily lives. Unfortunately, despite this, it faces a lot of criticism, including from the users themselves.
The truth is that Siri lags slightly behind its competition. To make matters worse, of course there is also a lack of Czech localization, i.e. Czech Siri, which is why we have to rely on, for example, English. Although in essence English is not such a big problem for voice control of the device, it is necessary to realize that, for example, we must create such text messages or reminders strictly in the given language, which can bring unpleasant complications.
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