As part of their Let's Talk iPhone event today, Apple showed off their SIRI acquisition as the new, artificially intelligent voice control system for iPhone 4S. It hooks into Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha, and it's natural language interface will automatically perform a number of tasks, including:
- Tell my wife I'm running late
- Remind me to call the vet
- Any good burger joints around here?
- Call a taxi
It can converse with you:
- "I found a number of burger joints near here, I've organized them by rating." And you can even respond, "how about tacos instead?"
It can send and read messages, search the web, look up map locations, set reminders, tell you the weather, set a meeting or event, set alarms, and more.
English, French, and German at launch. In Beta at first. More languages and services to launch in the future.
This looks to be the killer feature Apple is counting on to move the externally not-redesigned iPhone 4S this year.
Reader comments
Apple announces SIRI artificial intelligence voice control for iPhone 4S
So Rene, I had to step away for a sec. Is this feature native to the device?
How much is this "new" iphone going to cost?
is this gonna work on iphone 4
This "SIRI" is only for the new iPhone4S ?? Or will it work on good old iPhone 4 with the new iOS5??
Siri is for iPhone 4S only.
seriously this was there 1 more thing
Forgive me if I am mistaken, but Siri seems to be completely software-based. If so, how can Apple restrict it to only the 4S? I have a hard time believing the A5 chip is necessary to run Siri. Any word on this?
Well prepare for am evem harder time as guess whatto make a phone understand natural english it needs a decent processor im not saying this to you but EVERYONE A5 IS REPEAT IS NEEDED FOR A PHONE TO UNDERSTAMD ENGLISH!! Ok
Apparently (based on your lack of understandable English grammar and spelling), you don't have the capabilities of an A5 chip. And to counter your argument that "A5 is needed for a phone to understand english," how do you explain the dozens or even hundreds of phones with voice command technology already out there? Including the iPhone 4, which has been quite capable of running the original Siri app (which Apple bought and based this new feature on) without the A5 chip. Instead of typing an illegitimate and un-backed claim in all caps, try an intelligent response.
will there be any implementation of voice recognition at all in the iP4?
If this is iPhone 4S only, then jailbreaking is sounding like a better idea by the minute!
do people really use voice command that bad???? i dont and this voice command thing will prob be only 4S becasue they need some reason to switch from iphone 4 because there is no other reason
Wow, like seriously how useful is this? Extremely let down with apple today.
Wow, like how useful is this? Extremely let down with apple today.
Call me crazy but can't I do this on Android 2.3 now? I use voice to text on my Photon all the time.
Yes, Android has had it for a while now but they aren't saying it is first. Great implementation it seems though.
iPhone 4S only? This only seems software based.
Can anyone explain to me why Siri isn't going to be offered on the iPad 2? It has the same processor and 3G/wi-fi abilities as the 4S. It makes as much sense for this to be on a tablet as it does a smartphone...
cause they whant to give people a reason to get the 4s..without it has not got much going for it...am sure jailbreak will bring siri to the ipad2 and iphone 4...this is apple they always hold back features on current hardware
Siri's built into a bunch of apps already, and the software runs on both the 4S and in Apple's data centers. Because the process is so CPU-intensive, it'll only run on the iPhone 4S with its newer A5 chip. That makes sense with how many features are packed into it, like learning your voice's natural cadence and understanding English, French, and German
I still have to the Original Siri app from before apple bought the rights to them. It still works fine on my iPhone 4 running latest firmware on the Verizon version. I too feel that it is a sham that it must take the A5 processor to handle the app! I would like to have an updated version!
actually now that I check it, the app tells me it will cease to work on the 15th of October! BS
Wow! This is absolutely garbage. Clearly the iPhone 4 can handle the Siri technology, Apple is just making it exclusive to the 4S because that is now its only appeal. The only thing I could see requiring the power of the A5 chip is the multi-program integration, but that still seems like a stretch.
Damn, it's gone from the app store too, bs
Yawn.........
I finally got to watch the video. I LOVE their choice of music. :-D
I'd say this is better than the Android implementation purely for the conversation piece. You can probably do all of the commands they used [some may differ but can still get the results] and Vlingo might cover even more but the continued conversation [ask a question, get an answer, follow-up question on same topic without repeating the first question] is really slick.
Vlingo is ok...the more you use it the better it gets, and Im sure they will now put more features in
theres an app for that
and why it was held at apple headquarters lol