Siri’s creators working on a new, human-like virtual assistant

The original creators of Siri are working on a new artificial intelligence system called Viv that they hope will be able to handle more complicated requests than Apple’s or Google’s smart assistants.

Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, the founders of Viv Labs, reckon Viv’s unique selling point is that it can analyze different nouns in a sentence to come up with a useful answer.

Current virtual assistants wouldn’t be able recognize a question like, for example: “On my way to my brother’s house, I need to pick up some cheap wine that goes well with lasagne,” cites Wired.

Most likely, the assistant would be able to direct the user to a local wine store but wouldn’t be able to recommend a wine that best suits the lasagne.

Viv, however, would look at the nouns ‘lasagne’, ‘brother’ and ‘house’ and come up with an accurate answer.

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Smarter still, the team says Viv will know what you need without giving it a specific command. For example, if you said ‘drunk’, it’d automatically call you a cab.

This all sounds great, but what Viv will have to overcome is the stiff competition, especially with Apple said to be working on a revamped version of Siri.

➤ Via Wired

Featured image credit: Mandy Cheng/AFP/GettyImages