The creators of Apple's Siri virtual assistant, which debuted to much fanfare in 2011 with the launch of the iPhone 4S, are currently developing a new artificial life they hope will blow Siri out of the water.
With many Siri users understanding the limits of the virtual assistant, the new start-up Viv Labs, outside the realm of Apple, believes it can take the Suri into new untapped assistant territory.
The new assistant will go by the name of Viv, and will be able to understand complex sentences and function as a true assistant.
"Siri is chapter one of a much longer, bigger story," says Dag Kittlaus, one of Viv's cofounders. Kittlaus was a creator of the VA along with fellow Viv Labs co-founders Chris Brigham and Adam Cheyer.
The goal for Viv is to give it the ability to complete complex tasks that ends the limits that confounded the Siri experience, including the assistant's inability to deliver flight times, schedule dinners and an assortment of other functions users felt needed to be included.
The Viv team claims its new virtual assistant will be able to learn and give it the ability to complete a number of tasks with near limitless capacity. They hope Viv will, down the road, be able to perform almost any task.
"The vision is very significant," says Oren Etzioni, a renowned AI expert who heads the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in the same report on the new tech. "If this team is successful, we are looking at the future of intelligent agents and a multibillion-dollar industry."
In related Siri news, Apple has reportedly put through a patent to extend the Siri virtual assistant to computers, Tech Times reports. The patent would allow for the desktop version of Siri, enabling users to speak directly to their computer or even make a specific gesture to get Siri working. It could be a major move to assist the blind and vision-impaired, as well as those where typing can cause discomfort or injury, in making it easier to use a computer.
While Apple is known to file a number of patents throughout the year and not all of those always come to fruition, the move could signal that they are aware of Viv and want to extend Siri as far as possible in the immediate future.
