Apple has come up with speech recognition technology in its latest iPhone 4S that is equipped with Siri that serves as an assistant. Siri is the major differentiation between iPhone 4S and its predecessors.
Siri in iPhone 4S is interesting but unripe
Siri is not something fresh. It began its life as an experiment funded by DARPA that is known to be the largest artificial intelligence project uptil now. Siri is built on the same Nuance speech recognition technology that also powers that speech recognition users have been using for many years. Dragon NaturallySpeaking was earlier available as a free application on the iPhone in February, 2010. Apple then bought Siri in april, 2010 and incorporated it in its latest iPhone, breaking the old Siri app on its earlier iPhones.
So at present Siri has been made available exclusively in iPhone 4S. The technology has improved a lot since it was first introduced as a less-accurate and slightly incomplete iPhone application. It is now integrated into iOS 5 much better making it more accurate than it ever was. Siri can make out most of what you are saying if you hold the iPhone near your ear, even in a noisy environment such as inside a car running at a speed of 60 miles/hour. The speech recognition is not perfect. A few of its errors are laughable. But in a silent environment Siri’s accuracy is almost like that of a desktop version of NaturallySpeaking running on very powerful processors.
The integration of Siri in the iOS 5 software of iPhone 4S makes it easy to use. It comes alive once you press and hold iPhone 4S’s Home button with a sound of a short beep that signals that you can begin speaking. It can also be used in the speakerphone mode. You can simply raise the handset to your ear if in a noisy environment and the iPhone’s proximity sensors activate Siri.
Apple may be calling Siri as ‘beta’ because of its odd non-working tendency. The company has assured it users that Siri will be improved continuously. They claim that the software learns the way to speak as you go and recognize more accurately as it will learn your speaking ways. Still, adding beta software in an iPhone and launching it as a new iPhone is a thin thread to differentiate it from its predecessors. Only a company with the chutzpah like Apple can take such a courageous step. But Siri works well enough for Apple to pull it back when its supported with the faster processor and advanced camera of iPhone 4S (among the 197 improvements Apple boasts of).
Users still cannot comment on its improvement on speech recognition definitely rate it as fun to use. The conversation you carry out with it is interesting. Like if you ask, “Where are the good Italian restaurants?” Siri displays the list of 24 Italian restaurants in New York arranged according to their ratings.
A conversation with Siri
Siri brings a little attitude with it which is interesting. Though at times there arise funny misunderstandings like on saying, “Call me an ambulance” it responded, “From now on, I’ll call you ‘an ambulance’. Okay?” Siri’s voice still sounds robotic and thus boring. It was expected that since Apple owns the app now, it would polish the voice more like GPS units or like the melodious yet mutinous HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there still exist some peculiarities in the speech like the way it pronounces “restaurant”, sounding more like “resta-runt”.
Along with using the various capabilities, you can also make calls easily through Siri by just saying the name of anyone added in your Contacts app. Siri quickly connects (something that was available since ages in various other much lesser mobile phones). It can also help you to say an email and convert it into text and it asks you who you’re sending it to, the subject and so on. Unfortunately it’s not use to separating the paragraphs of text even when one speaks the way one does with NaturallySpeaking specifying ‘new paragraph’. The email function is good to use for short emails while driving (though not recommended) but it still needs much improvement before using it to send emails solely based on speech.
Some of the talents of Siri are almost like entering a science fiction range like pushing and holding the Home button, then telling it to set a timer of 15 minutes, telling it to set an alarm, requesting for directions or asking it to launch a playlist in iTunes. Siri is unable to interact with Twitter but the issue is solved with a workaround. Apple should have made the capability available from beginning. But if the company sticks to its promise then we can soon witness a lot more interaction with the iOS apps.
Siri in the iPhone 4S, still needs improvement. Another few development may have helped in releasing a better technology. But Apple was already late according to its usual product cycle so it was perhaps compelled to launch iPhone 4S early. But even the present Siri is impressive and gives us an impression that the future of the technology is bright.