Creators Of Siri Demo Their Next AI Assistant Viv, It's Far More Open Platform (twitter.com)

A small company called Viv on Monday unveiled a "frictionless", artificially intelligent software also called Viv, which understands complicated human queries and connects with other apps to get your work done more conveniently and efficiently. Viv was demonstrated live at TechCrunch's Disrupt NY conference on Monday. Dag Kittlaus, co-founder of Viv, and creator of Siri, said that the idea behind it is to open the app to all developers so that they could leverage their technology. (Interestingly, under the realm of Apple, Siri, five years since first launched, is still not open for developers.) Ben Popper, reports for The Verge: The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform. One of the biggest frustrations with Siri is that it has only a small number of tasks it can complete. For the vast multitude of requests or queries, Siri will default to a generic web search. Viv's approach is much closer to Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase goods or book reservations. The company's tagline -- intelligence becomes a utility -- nicely sums up its goal of powering the conversational AI inside a multitude of gadgets and digital services.You can watch the demonstration here.

Comments

iOS and Apple and the Masses

[fyngyrz]

It's a wonder to me why Siri can't accomplish these things like they intentionally dumbed it down for the masses.

Well, let's see. iOS devices:

o one crippled level of folders
o no inter-app sharing of data
o apps disappear when devs stop paying for app store
o no memory cards - what, move data around? Are you NUTZ?
o no general purpose pointer support
o every iOS up(smash)grade breaks previously API-compliant apps
o Mommy's little app store Protects Your Tender Sensibilities From Teh Horror of Teh SEXAGE!

...yeah, might not be wanting to look to Apple for non-dumbed-down iOS devices. That doesn't seem to be how they roll. Over their customers, that is.