In case you have missed out on Siri thus far, it is a small project that has a lot happening for it. It had already raised a neat $24 million from the market in a Series A round of venture capital. That was in 2008. When it was first released on to the iPhone as an app in the last quarter of 2009, there was a lot of buzz surrounding it. I was one of the many who had covered Siri and had good things to say about it. And now Apple has acquired it for good.
A Siri board member and venture capitalist, Shawn Carolan, said that the offer made by Apple was something that they could not refuse. The obvious Godfather joke aside, it is pretty significant that Apple made this kill before Google did. This technology would’ve been a killer case in favor of the Android and against the iPhone. Here’s why.
Siri would've made Google's voice search much more intuitive and natural
Siri, on the surface, is a simple voice activated search engine. But as you go deeper, you realize that it is exactly what it says on the box — your new personal search assistant. You don’t have to speak codes to, you can speak much more naturally to Siri than most other such apps. And you can speak of complex things that you wouldn’t normally tell a computer. Things like “where’s the nearest chinese restaurant” or “call me a cab” can easily be said to Siri, who will then do the needful. Siri had some tie ups, so when it came to certain restaurants or theaters, it would offer to book seats for you. And in all cases, Siri will give you a relevant phone number, guided map, website and every other resource that it can find.
You can also tell Siri to remind you about something and it will send you a mail at the give time reminding you to complete your task. Siri can also place calls for you with the aid of your address book or the Internet.
All of these things Siri does with only voice commands that are spoken naturally. And with time, like any good butler or wine, Siri gets better at doing what it does. So are you getting close to why Siri is so very lucrative and important? Well, I will tell it to you straight — it is A.I.
Apple has already started Integrating voice control into the iPhone
Artificial intelligence of a new kind is what makes Siri so very special. In the end, the phone app is just an implementation of Siri. In the right hands, Siri will become lots more. It will, in fact, make Apple’s ‘Knowledge Navigator’ dreams come true. At long last you can actually issues those natural sounding commands and get results. The fact that Siri gets better with time for everyone who uses it, is something that simply cannot be beat at the moment.
So if Google had this technology, it would be mashed up with the enormous amounts of data that they collect and the A.I. would grow so much faster. Given the algorithm geniuses at Google, Siri would probably have been in much better hands. But now that it is in Apple’s hands, we can look forward to seeing much more human friendly devices coming out of Cupertino than Mountain View. iPads and iPhones would instantly become so much more fun to use. Apple would probably include it in next year’s iPhone OS update and call it ‘Concierge’ or something.
Now you get one more reason to be lazy as anything with yourself. No longer would you be typing out queries. You have a digital butler to take care of your every need. Of course, when the A.I. becomes too intelligent, we will be serving its needs but then that’s pretty far away (or is it? :Cue-Twilight Zone theme).
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