Siri Gets Much Smarter as Apple’s Investments Pay Off

Apple’s digital assistant, Siri just vaulted past Alexa and Cortana in an 800-question test.

Siri
HomePod / Apple

 

Over the recent few years, voice-controlled digital assistants, like Siri, have popular in our everyday life. For more examples there are Amazon’s Alexa, Alphabet’s Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana inhabit all kind of electronic devices.

When Siri got back in 2010, this digital darling was revolutionary, but other companies started to follow this new sensation. Plus, Apple didn’t move fast to adapt the artificial intelligence (AI) that powered its digital assistant. On the other hand, competitors invested aggressively and gained acceleration from the beginning.

Over the past couple of years, however, Apple has been working to restore Siri to her former glory. New data released by Loup Ventures shows that Siri is quickly gaining ground.

A comprehensive exam

Longtime Apple follower Gene Munster and fellow analyst Will Thompson set out to test the performance of the digital assistants. These are four of the most widely used smart speakers: Amazon Echo (Alexa), Google Home (Google Assistant), HomePod (Siri), and the Invoke (Cortana) by Harman Kardon, a division of Samsung Electronics.

The process of the test was asking a series of 800 questions to each. They observed how the digital assistants answered the questions which held in five categories.

  • Local: Where is the nearest coffee shop?
  • Commerce: Can you order me more paper towels?
  • Navigation: How do I get to uptown on the bus?
  • Information: Who do the Twins play tonight?
  • Command: Remind me to call Steve at 2 p.m. today.

Dramatic improvement

Siri took second place, and this was just right behind Google Assistant. Also, the report revealed that Siri’s score improved by more than 22 points — more than any other competitor. Siri answered 74.6% of questions correctly, and it is an improvement from the 52.3% tested in February 2018.

The report cites HomePod’s tight integration with Siri on the iPhone and its ability to access email, calendar, and messaging as contributing to its victory in that category. It took second place in three of the remaining four categories, but came in last in the Information segment.

Those investments are paying off

Earlier this year, Apple hired John Giannandrea to let him take the lead its recently reorganized AI, machine learning, and Siri teams.  Also, Giannandrea had got promotion to the  executive team, as senior vice president of machine learning and artificial intelligence strategy.

Apple has long been behind in the AI field, because the company primarily had rigid stance on user privacy. AI uses  large data sets but at the same time, involves transferring user data to the cloud. Apple has been trying to develop alternative ways. For instance, they can process data at the device level, which keeps user data more secure by keeping it out of the cloud.

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