Siri has been anthromorphised, by Apple as well as others, as a female and is repeatedly referred to as “she”. On the flip side, Siri has been sometimes dismissed as a gimmick, and has been the subject of lawsuits that accuse Apple of overselling the capabilities of a feature that is still officially beta.
At its introduction, Siri was able to interact with the iPhone’s native apps as well as external apps such as the “answer engine” Wolfram Alpha for executing web searches. At this year’s WWDC event, Apple announced the additional features it was bringing to Siri as part of its iOS version 6 upgrade.
These include actions such as opening any app on the phone, updating Facebook statuses and sending tweets, making reservations for restaurants in the US, and providing information about sports scores in the US. But there is still no method for non-Apple developers to use Siri in their apps.
Apple’s competitors have not been resting either. Samsung recently introduced S-Voice, a Siri-like feature, as part of its new Galaxy SIII smartphone while other apps such as Evi aim to provide competing services on the iPhone.
Will Siri’s achievements disappear in time, like tears in rain?
Siri’s features are built on decades-long research in computer science in areas such as natural language processing, machine learning, distributed computing and artificial intelligence.
These are still active areas of investigation and recent advances should enable future software assistants to improve their knowledge of context in spoken language and be able to engage in effortless conversation without resorting to canned responses. Apple itself uses the data gathered from Siri users to continually improve its capabilities.
Intelligent assistants are important to help users navigate and work in a world that’s drowning in information pouring in, like tears in rain, from a vast array of sources. Their role will become more prominent as their capabilities improve.
The science fiction vision of sentient, knowledgeable robot helpers is not impossible to realise. When that happens, we may have to speak about their dreams as well.
