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Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel
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."
This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple. Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer, even naming it after the actress who voiced it. Many of the insider remarks on this project are talking about how it's intended to be like the Star Trek computer, even addressing it as "computer." Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.
Voice recognition is driven by feedback, and Apple has a huge headstart with Siri because it's already out now in beta form, and so Apple has access to real-world usage data. By the time Majel comes out, Siri will be even more advanced and will have been shaped by its users. It will be interesting to see how Google competes.
Working.
... that the image that comes to mind involves Majel and Siri and a pit filled with mud?
Check your premises.
I absolutely love the use of "Majel" here; Star Trek has influenced so much of our lives and of our tech, and now that are finally starting to get into responsive voice-operated systems, it shows a great deal of respect to bring it back to the original visionaries.
Aikon-
She was also the first officer of the Enterprise in the first pilot episode.
Pssssst, Google. Use Morgan Freeman's voice. I promise you'll make trillions.
The very name takes the wind out of the fan boys that will want to proclaim 'apple invented this, it was their idea'. Clever
OK, anybody who didn't immediately think of Majel Barrett without being told who she was, please leave -- you're obviously in the wrong place. ;-)
I keed, I keed. Well, mostly.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Works wonderfully in Alpha test, and now in Beta it is even better. It mainly pulls data from Wiki, but will also voice dial, check appoinments, Find movie times, voice actived texting! woo hoo! and much more.. and the things it doesnt know will come back with a funny answer and not the i'll google that for you response that Siri does.
Google has less real world usage?
The implication of your question is that Google already has something like Siri out, and has for some time.
So then why is Google working on a Siri competitor?
Huh.
And of course in Siri stories many Android users just aid to get Vlingo. How is that helping Google again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anyone else have the urge to place siri and majel side by side in hopes of reproducing a cleverbot conversation?
Seriously, google - do your own thing, don't just copy Apple over and over. It makes you look bad.
They have. Google is developing the first browser to have a three digit version number (to be rapidly followed by Mozilla).
The release candidate should be available next week or so.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Great Idea Google. I knew exactly who this was named after and why the second i saw the name. Its perfect.
Majel was amazing. TNG for life..
It's really a shame that Majel herself isn't still alive to provide the core voice work for the product. People would have swarmed in droves to have the actual Star Trek computer voice at their beck and call.
Then again, who knows how much audio tape and footage there is of her locked away? Maybe there's enough of a phoneme and phrase collection out there that they could resurrect her voice. Couldn't be any more difficult than extracting the phonemes from someone else's voice, provided there's enough data to do the job.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Google has a large team of researchers actually developing speech recognition systems, and the contribute to the science and technology of speech recognition. They have been at this for a decade, have vast amounts of data, and are doing extremely well.
Siri was spin-out from a tax-payer funded DARPA research project, cobbled together with some third party libraries. Apple snapped up the technology at bargain basement prices. Apple hasn't contributed shit to speech recognition, but now they are going to try to lock up applications of speech recognition with trivial patents.
Google has been doing speech recognition for nearly a decade, and some of the people there have decades more of experience. Google has vast amounts of voice data from their other speech-based products. Apple doesn't even come close: they don't have the skills, the people, or the data.
Like so many other technologies that they bought, Apple will milk this for its PR value for a few years and then declare victory and keep copying innovations from its competitors.
Gee, if only they had access to something like Google Voice..
What is different between that and the DVD's I mentioned though? Voice RECOGNITION is not that hard, Dragon and other programs do a hell of job getting words.
Understanding and acting on meaning? Within a context? That is the hard part. That is the part Apple has lots of great data for now that Google really doesn't have, from any of the voice controlled services currently offered - because you have to speak to the device in a specific pattern instead of just letting you speak and deriving meaning.
Of course Siri has lots of silly mistakes currently. But Apple is learning from them while Google has yet to make the same mistakes to learn from...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley