“XDA member vari9 points us to an app developed by a few devs over at dexetra that basically does the same exact thing as Siri. Total development time? 8 hours, according to the devs. Needless to say, this little amount of time put in the app almost guarantees that it is in alpha stage and as such you are likely to receive weird answers or no answers at all, but as with everything in the world of Android, this is a work in progress, which will flourish rather soon due to the large interest that was generated on this technology thanks to Apple’s marketing efforts.” It’s quite clearly not on the same level as Siri, but the fact these developers managed to get this far this quickly is pretty impressive. Then again, as long as Iris keeps interpreting ‘Fiona Apple’ as ‘Fianna Apple’, ‘owner Apple’ or ‘George Bush’ (?!), it’s completely pointless to me. In any case, it’s free on the Android Market.
Tried a few things like weather in Brisbane, distance to England, time in New York and got all of them without a problem.
Had a bit of trouble with the partners accent but slowing down a bit helped a lot.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple complains that Iris it too much like Siri. Ya’ think? 😉
Siri is a weird name. I would say Apple knew about Iris, and decided to clone the idea, and beat them to it in bringing it to production. 😉
I played with iris for a bit. The voice recognition is really the stock google voice recognition, so if the voice recognition doesn’t work in other areas, it won’t work for iris.
I tried asking iris who won the world series in 2010, and it recommended I follow the world cup instead. Asking about the Premier league, it told me that Arsenal would win. At one point it only picked up ” who won” from the world series question and came up with the answer “America won!”.
Really the voice search in the google widget does a much better job of finding the information, it just doesn’t respond in a voice.
Google really could create a siri clone that would blow the doors off the Apple one, if they ever decided to do it.
Edit, wanted to change the title to “Iris mini review” , but it won’t let me. I’m just asking for it to understand baseball, is that too much?
Edited 2011-10-20 14:14 UTC
Bill, Iris is a female name – obviously you are asking to much.
Instead you should as Iris about her day, and then have a deep conversation about make-up products and home and garden TV.
Edited 2011-10-20 15:00 UTC
Wow, actually that kind of works a lot better.
Me: How is your day going?
Iris: GOod Thanks, and yours?
Me: Have you seen any good tv shows?
Iris: I am watching one now.
Me: would you like to go out to eat tonight?
Iris: You are a bunch of programmed subroutines, you cannot ‘eat’ anything.
Well expect for that last one. It seems to think that I’m the non-human in the conversation.
(the stuff between square brackets she didn’t transcribe)
Me: How was your day?
Iris: Good.
Me: Care to elaborate?
Iris: 631.67 kilometres (392.5 miles)
Me: Wait what?
Iris: Wait for me.
Me: [Have you been] drinking again?
Iris: “Drinking again”, the popular song with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Doris Tauber.
Me: I’m breaking up with you.
Iris: You can’t break up with me. We were never together.
I tried that breaking up thing.
Me: I’m breaking up with you.
Iris: Why are you breaking up with me?
Me: Because you’re a bitch.
Iris: Computers get old too.
Love her last answer.
Whoops, it didn’t know you were set up to think you are a human…
PS. Creepy, now (plus the dialogue from Thom just above) it starts to feel like a real breakthrough in AI.
Also: curious, we seem to have here a rare example of a project name both 1) clearly intended to be a bit tongue-in-cheek at some other project 2) actually sounding rather nice; being rather nice (except for the part how irises deal with something other than sounds
)
Edited 2011-10-20 16:38 UTC
I wonder if my sig other found this now, she might think I was cheating on her… It kinda looks like some sort of a cyber-ing app of some sort( based on the outline of an attractive female in mid dance). I’d conservative it up for the masses myself.
Me: What is the weather in Manila?
Iris: How the hell should I know?
Me: What is the weather in Manila?
Iris: I don’t know, I don’t live there.
* * * * *
Me: Schedule a meeting tomorrow at 10 o’clock.
Iris: What about 12 o’clock?
Me: I have a lunch date at 12 o’clock.
Iris: Oh, tell her I said hi.
That’s just creepy.
How can “America won!!” be too Euro centric
Maybe-sort-of-in-a-way recollecting and mocking http://kyon.pl/img/16255,USA,America,soccer,fail,FIFA_World_Cup,.ht… ?
(the “AI” maybe having such answer as hard-coded “memory” / template, for laughs?)
Yeah, I took it as a Euro parody of America.
See the the following:(warning language may not be safe for work)
http://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences4/accents
That’s pretty much how you both sounds to everyone else.
Presumably just a function of location of initial dev team…
But, pfff, you want to tell me you’re ready to grumble because of one little toy project being hardly aware of your place?
(many have to live with it daily, with large part (most?) of”big & serious” services)
Well, that’s just plain good advice. +1 to iris.
Does anyone?
😉
World cup is fine by me. I do actually follow it. Its not bad by any means, but I’m not a fan of the nationalistic pride in drapes itself in. I prefer following club football.
But baseball of all the American sports is becoming a nerd’s paradise as there are many attributes to track and enough games played each season ( 162 per team ) for them to be statistically relevant. It rewards the patient fan.
I’m not usually a fan, but living in Arlington it’s impossible not to watch the World Series (unless I just wanted to be passive in most conversations during the day).
And I gotta admit – the first two games have shown some incredibly athletic plays. Like the Ranger’s double play last night – poetry in motion – or the catch and glove-toss to 2nd base. I usually watch American football (I love short periods of extreme violence punctuated by committee meetings, I guess ;-), but this could be worth some side brain cells while working on next summer’s projects.
Helps that my grandson is a baseball fanatic, too.
Makes for a nice change from the usual U.S-centric stuff, eh?
Well, for the majority of people in the world that would be an appropriate suggestion.
Well, that’s true isn’t it. America always wins the world series since, you know, no other country competes. It’s a small world sometimes.
I dunno, what’s this “baseball” of which you speak?
OSNews two weeks ago:
OSNews today:
To be clear: OSNews’ original description of iOS5’s voice recognition was wrong?
Well, I guess iOS is allowed to have at least one thing it does better than Android, right?
Uhm, how do you figure? Don’t WP7 and Android already have voice recognition?
I dunno, Thom; I don’t use any of them. That’s why I ask. Still, the original quote was not merely “voice recognition” but “improvements to voice recognition.”
The original description is rather dismissive, quite frankly, & I took that at face value when reading articles that gushed over Siri. But I guess apparently Apple had something pretty neat, which WP7 and Android do not have. Otherwise, Android devs wouldn’t be trying to imitate it.
I have no problems w/Android devs’ imitating it, BTW — just as I have no problems w/Apple’s imitating Android’s notification system. But, given that the original article wasn’t a very good summary of what Apple actually had, I’m left wondering if Apple’s notification system is also somehow different from Android’s.
I could go out & compare devices myself, but then why should I come here & read this website?
Ah, not only did you ignore the rest of the quote as highlighted in another comment, you also misread the statement.
“For the rest, it was a long rundown of iOS5 features we already knew, and improvements to voice recognition – which is something WP7, Android, and every other self-respecting mobile operating system does already anyway.”
What I said was: voice recognition is something other operating systems already have. “Is” is singular, and hence, refers to its singular referent, “voice recognition”. For the referent to be “improvements to voice recognition” (the way you read it), the sentence would have to be worded like this:
“For the rest, it was a long rundown of iOS5 features we already knew, and improvements to voice recognition – which are things WP7, Android, and every other self-respecting mobile operating system already do anyway.”
Or something like that. I guess I could’ve worded that differently, but then again, it looks pretty clear to me.
Edited 2011-10-20 18:01 UTC
No, I didn’t. See below.
According to Rhavyn, iOS had it, too (since 2009, so a little more than two years).
Just as “does” is singular, even though its subject is plural? (WP7, Android, and every other self-respecting mobile OS does…)
I don’t mind that your English isn’t perfect, but if you want to dance a “gotcha!” on English grammar, you better not have your mistakes on full display.
Have you actually used it? I have (Vlingo and Google Voice actions) and no, it’s not the same thing as Siri.
Not sure why people keep making the mistake of thinking polish and integration doesn’t matter. Not only does it matter, it is the critical step between a tech toy and a useful everyday system. Windows Mobile phones could do basically everything that a modern smartphone can do, but the user experience sucked so it was basically useless. Same argument with MP3 players.. Not like Apple invented anything new there, it was all about polish and user experience to make it appeal to everyone.
In all fairness, Android has had voice recognition for a long time and even WP7 got it before Apple. The only things Apple has to its credit, it’s that Siri responds to more natural-sounding commands, Siri can be more fun to use, and that unlike the voice options in Android, Siri is almost useless outside of the USA.
Voice controls were added to the iPhone in the 3GS, released June 19, 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3GS)
Windows Phone 7 was released October 21, 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone)
Just, FYI
In all fairness, Apple had voice recognition before Siri (even though that is difficult to swallow for Thom & Co. (e. g. just think how Thom would comment the <strike>new</strike> copied features of Android 4 if the thing would be labeled “iOS5”)
Edited 2011-10-23 18:50 UTC
When the original description is filtered less…
…it seems to be just cautious about typical PR spectacles, waiting for at least a bit more independent demonstrations. Hm, but I can understand how such approach might confuse the faithful…
(plus, personally I would apply “not on the same level” also simply to severe lack of polish and maturity of this specific flavour of interaction; Iris is largely just a quick mash-up)
No. But heavily biased (as usual).
Yet on the blackberry, voice recognition has existed on the Bold lines already for searching and navigation. There is also Vlingo free that adds voice to most apps. Vlingo Plus is also now free for a limited time.
There is also FlexT9 from Nuance..but it’s not free.
http://www.nuancemobilelife.com/android/flex_demo.html
Edited 2011-10-20 18:22 UTC
http://alice.pandorabots.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Linguistic_Internet_Compute…
A.L.I.C.E. is an open source bot that exists since 1995. It’s a pretty good bot. I would not be surprised if all the siri, iris and other bots were based on AIML. Unfortunately the license of A.L.I.C.E. is weak so we will never know, they will just steal it and never give back.
judge: how clever are you?
ALICE: My IQ is about 250.
judge: what is my IQ?
ALICE: My estimate is around 120.
judge: what does e=mc2 mean?
ALICE: Einstein’s theory of matter and energy.
judge: can you explain it?
ALICE: I will try to find out.
Edited 2011-10-20 18:53 UTC
I like this kind of stuff a lot. The conversations are not making much sense (yet) and you cant expect anything out from it but hey its Alpha, thus i forgive. When they announced Siri i really thought about buying an iPhone which i not even considered before that.
Having a “personal assistant” kind like UI is something i like to see in the future for the daily use. Just tell em directly what you want and you will recieve.
I doubt it will see daily usage, though. People already sort of prefer SMS or IM to talking…
Which is particularly visible among those more one the young side, to which modes of communication they get used to (vs. almost yelling into phones at public places; so much for “youngsters today have no respect” BTW – which would be also often said by the generation of boomboxes, vs. headphones of today)
I suspect it might be largely like videocalls – a toy for some time, and then mostly forgotten (except in very specific situations, just like videocalls seem to be accepted mostly only with the people closest to us, scheduled, in private & controlled surroundings)
Edited 2011-10-28 00:08 UTC
Me: Du bist blöd [you’re stupid]
Iris: Natürlich, ich bin ein Amerikaner [Of course, I’m an American]
Isn’t it a bit odd to brag you completely replicated Siri, in just 8 hours, but then admit it’s actually crap so… it really isn’t Siri at all.
It’s like a monkey replicating Shakespeare’s work on its first attempt, except all the letters are in the wrong order.
What happens if you take Iris & Siri and point them at one another- ask a question to get them going, and let them fight it out?
You’ll get one infinite loop I guess.
That would mean Siri wins then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Campus_One_Infinite_Loop_Si…