Will Apple Let Siri and Apps Connect?

holy_calamity writes "Developers want to know when their apps will be able to connect to Siri, the virtual assistant built into the new iPhone 4S. Technology Review reports that providing APIs for Siri would not only make it possible to control apps with casual voice commands, but could also make Siri smarter if it is connected with other AI services able to do things like make very specific restaurant recommendations based on a person's past actions."

Comments

Word of warning

[93 Escort Wagon]

If Siri gets connected to your gps navigation app... well, just don't do anything to piss Siri off.

Re:Word of warning

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

It's not Bob I'm worried about, it's Clippy.

Re:Word of warning

[justin12345]

That's a pretty cool idea (the networking part, not the Terminators).

First off, is Siri is an actual AI? Does it learn or is it just a chatterbox?

If so, the fact that Siri will be installed on millions of phones incredible. One of the biggest limitations for any intelligence (artificial or not) is input. Even a mediocre AI becomes a lot more convincing on the Turing test with Google's help. Each Siri will have access to GPS data, user search patterns, their email, texts, and potentially even their photo's (with facial recognition data) and physical activity (via the accelerometer).

Now imagine if those millions of Siri were networked, operating as one large hive mind. Imagine the massive amount of data about the minutia of being human we would be feeding into that enormous AI. It's a huge opportunity to advance the field. It's also a little scary. Personally, if Apple was to allow a voluntary, opt-in program that would allow my Siri to network with other opt-in Siri's, I'd probably take it. But I'm not the paranoid type.

How about Apple's Apps?

[Lifix]

While you're at it Apple, it would be awesome if Siri could talk to all of Apple's apps as well. "Siri turn off bluetooth." etc...

Re:How about Apple's Apps?

[Grizzley9]

While you're at it Apple, it would be awesome if Siri could talk to all of Apple's apps as well. "Siri turn off bluetooth." etc...

Better yet: "Siri, when I leave the house, turn off wifi and turn on Bluetooth" .
"When I get to Lowe's, remind me to get lightbulbs." (Without have to store the contact "Lowe's" address in my Address book - you can do this with your contacts that have addresses, but would need to do that first.)

That or Apple could include some better geo location controls for phone functions like some Androids can do.k

Is Siri out to kill Google?

[wisebabo]

If people really like using Siri, then what's to keep Apple from using it as the front end for their own (or another party's) search engine?

It's all about who's closest to the user. Just as Microsoft feared their OS dominance would mean nothing if everyone spent their time in browsers, if search engines are pushed "beneath" these attractive voice interfaces, Google could be made irrelevant (on Apple devices anyway, especially because Apple will never let another company release something like Siri on iOS or Mac OS X).

Re:Is Siri out to kill Google?

[Moridineas]

I made an argument similar to this several years ago.

When google first hit the market, search was a BIG deal on the Internet. Whether hosted at random geocities, edu sites, random .coms, etc, information was very dispersed. Nowadays, things are so much more centralized. If I want to find something on the web, chances are it's at wikipedia, facebook, youtube, flickr, or amazon (or yelp, twitter, tumblr, livejournal, etc). Probably 90% of the time, I use google like a bookmarks bar--I know exactly where I want to go, I just use google as a shortcut.

Google has done a fantastic job of avoiding pitfalls though (and has consumed sites like youtube), so who knows. They're obviously rolling in cash and doing just fine. I would not at all be surprised to see a continued decline in the importance of search, however.

Re:Is Siri out to kill Google?

[DragonWriter]

If people really like using Siri, then what's to keep Apple from using it as the front end for their own (or another party's) search engine?

What's to stop them from doing that with the built in search box on iOS, even without their own voice-control system?

It's all about who's closest to the user.

Google has known that for quite a long time and has been working to address it for years. That's why they developed their own desktop browser to prevent a monopoly browser vendor from being able to direct people away from Google services, and also developed two of their own OSs to address the problem of OS vendors directing people away from Google services.

Google could be made irrelevant (on Apple devices anyway, especially because Apple will never let another company release something like Siri on iOS or Mac OS X).

One of the purposes of Android is to make that kind of threat less of a problem. If iOS had the vast majority of the mobile market share, that would be a huge problem; same if MacOS had the vast majority of the desktop market share, but Apple isn't Google's concern on that front.

But who gets to control what key words?

[ZackSchil]

"Shut up friends! My internet browser heard us saying the word Fry and it found a movie about Philip J. Fry for us. It also opened my calendar to Friday and ordered me some french fries."

There would need to be a way to strongly restrict the ways that apps could hook in or else things could turn into a disaster quickly. Not to mention the fact that the larger you make the domain of Siri, the more poorly it'll perform. That's just how AI works.

Re:But who gets to control what key words?

[Ukab the Great]

Why does there need to be word control?

A hypothetical pizza joint named "911 Pizza"

Re:But who gets to control what key words?

[BitZtream]

Why is this marked as Interesting? If you'd have bothered to even watch the demo of Siri you'd already know the answers. Siri isn't ALWAYS listening, you have to request its attention.

If you talk to Siri in an incoherent manner, its not going to do anything other than say 'what?' which is exactly the kind of response your going to get if you say 'fri' and nothing else at Siri now.

If you walk up to me on the street and just say 'fri', I'm going to be just as confused as Siri.

You narrow Siris domain by helping it with context .... you know, like you do in language with people, this isn't hard.

'Create a new appointment on Friday' or 'How do I fry sqaush' or 'what am I doing on friday'. And all of those things have enough easy to spot context that Siri can limit its search to an individual app very quickly.

Basically, you got marked as interesting for asking retarded questions that anyone who watched 10 seconds of video about the product already knows the answer too. Jesus, have you not even seen the TV commercials?

Siri

[Andrewkov]

Will Apple Let Siri and Apps Connect?

Did anybody stop to ask what Siri wants?

RememberTheMilk connects with Siri now

[jamezzz]

RememberTheMilk already has connected Siri to their task management app by basically redirecting the connection to the iPhone's reminder app. They talk about it on their blog, here: http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2011/10/we-taught-siri-to-add-tasks-to-remember-the-milk/.

Re:Prediction:

[somersault]

Uhm... Google has had a Siri-like Voice Search feature (it does a lot more than just "search") for a long time. There have been apps around for ages that add to its functionality too. I realise the rest of your post was a joke, but too many people are ignorant of the facts and probably would assume Voice Search was added to copy Siri. Apple has also had voice features in its OSes since the 90s of course, and iOS already had voice features too. Now people are acting like it's a gift from the gods just because it was mentioned in an Apple key note or whatever happened.

Siri & Angry Birds

[khr]

Then if it's tied with Angry Birds you can just tell it, "Siri, knock down those pigs" and it'll do it.

Re:Your Siri will outlive you

[mehrotra.akash]

reply to undo mod done by mistake

Not just an alternate interface

[psydeshow]

Presumably they are using something like the OS X Services framework to allow Siri to carry out actions in Apple iOS apps.

But remember that Siri's brains are server-side. So there is a lot of coordination that has to happen regarding a) knowing which apps provide which services, and b) knowing which provider(s) of a given service are installed on the user's phone. If there are two competing providers of the "reminder" service, which one does Siri use?

Apple are pretty damn clever when it comes to developers, but it seems to me that opening 3rd-party apps to Siri services is going to take a lot of engineering on both sides, and potentially complicate things for the end user.

Re:Prediction:

[iluvcapra]

Uhm... Google has had a Siri-like Voice Search feature (it does a lot more than just "search") for a long time.

I've seen these and Vlingo, it's comparable but Siri is probably the best for the time being. The main difference is you don't have to use canned expressions to do certain things, it will infer rather well what you wanted to do, and it will generally do a good job of maintaining an interactive conversation with you when you want to edit or elaborate on an action.

There have been apps around for ages that add to its functionality too. I realise the rest of your post was a joke, but too many people are ignorant of the facts and probably would assume Voice Search was added to copy Siri.

Google's ineptness at positioning its services to impact a large audience is well known. The entire organization revels in invitation-only betas, guru modes and a "good enough for Gospel" approach to UX.

Of course it'll happen

[Logic Bomb]

Apple is pretty predictable -- once they've started showing their hand. They consistently take successful ideas used in one place and expand them as far as possible. Successful user interface paradigms developed for one application later appear in others. The iOS App Store begat the Mac App Store. So it seems pretty obvious that Apple, having introduced Siri, will expand it.

Except for major OS releases to paid developer program members, Apple almost never releases anything with a "beta" label. Siri is labeled a beta, which surely is meant to indicate that more functionality is planned.

Re:Of course it'll happen

[smitty97]

The only other non-developer "beta" that I can remember is OS X Public Beta. And that was just so everyone could play with it, almost as a novelty. OS X has become much better since then. This is probably very similar.