sciencetech-blog

comments

Siri can make life easier when it comes to setting an alarm or making a call on an iPhone, but Apple's personal assistant also has its limitations when it comes to trickier requests.

Now, the original creators of Siri are working on a superior artificial intelligence system called Viv.

They say that it can handle more complex requests than the present generation of personal assistants - Siri, Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana, for example.

The original creators of Apple's Siri PA (pictured) are working on a superior artificial intelligence system called Viv, which can handle more complex questions than the current generation of smartphone helpers

Viv, which gets its name from the Latin for 'live,' can analyse the nouns in a sentence to provide more helpful answers than current PAs, according to its creators who are based in San Jose, California.

The founders of the start-up, Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, told Wired that Viv teaches itself, unlike Siri for example, which only performs actions programmed by Apple's engineers.

The computer scientists envisage that its capacity to learn and provide help to users is limitless. So it will be able to answer users' complicated queries using its cloud-based 'brain' when it launches.

It can do this by analysing different nouns in a sentence to formulate an answer, creating code as it goes long without the need for any programmers.

Viv could one day predict people's needs as it learns more about them and analyses nouns in sentences to provide answers to complex questions, which current smartphones (pictured) can't handle

The founders said, that if someone told Siri that they are on their way to their brother's house and need to pick up cheap wine that goes well with lasagne, they would probably be met with no helpful response.

At best, a current PA would show a local wine store on a map. But Viv would isolate the words 'lasagne', 'wine,' 'brother' and 'house' to formulate a helpful answer.

This could be offering wine suggestions as well as where to buy the chosen product.

Viv could one day predict people's needs as it learns more about them, so that someone slurring 'drunk' into their smartphone would be assisted by Viv automatically calling them a cab home.

Unlike Siri, Viv is an open system and will let businesses and apps become part of its 'brain' after it launches.

Its creators hope that Viv could one day be embedded in all sorts of everyday objects that are connected to the internet – as well as smartphones.

While Viv sounds impressive, Google, Facebook and Apple are all competing to build the most intelligent next-generation PA and only time will tell how advanced their offerings will be.