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Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel

Posted by timothy on from the what-are-you-doing-gene dept.

judgecorp writes "Google is working on a competitor to Apple's Siri voice input system. It's an extension to its existing Voice Actions offering with a name that should ring bells. Majel is named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who was the voice of most of the Star Trek on-board computers, as well as playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the first series and being Gene Roddenberry's wife."

1 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google versus Apple by bonch · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Google has less real world usage?

    Real world usage of voice recognition at the level of Siri? Yes. Here's an article by an ex-IBM researcher who worked on voice recognition for six years explaining why Siri was released in beta form in the first place. The saying in the community is "there is no data like more data." Engineers at Apple can see all the things people are asking Siri, the queries it doesn't recognize, and so on, and they can use that valuable feedback to tweak the system. Infamous gaps in Siri's functionality, like the "abortion clinic" question, will be fixed at release.

    Google certainly had voice recognition features before, but they weren't much used, nor were they on the level of Siri.