Google Assistant and Siri have figured in a new comparison video on YouTube. The two digital assistants were able to demonstrate — not only the power of their artificial intelligence — but also their personalities.
Early reports claim that Google Assistant has an edge over Siri in terms of Google Assistant's command of natural human language.
YouTuber Marques Brownlee set out to test whether that perception would hold true in an actual face-off.
Google vs Siri
On the one hand, Siri is powered by iOS 10.0.3 on the iPhone 7 Plus, and, on the other, Google Assistant runs on Android 7.1 Nougat on the Pixel XL. These specs somehow place both devices on a level playing field since they are packed with the latest software and hardware from their respective manufacturers.
The clip shows a splitscreen top view of the devices, placed side by side and outgunning each other.
Brownlee's series of questions and commands — ranging from a simple "Who is Mark Zuckerberg?" or "Open Instagram," to a complicated string like "Show me photos of cats that I took last week" — prove that, even with the bad rap Siri has been getting recently, Apple's trademark voice assistant is showing no sign of backing down against Google Assistant. That is, even if Siri gets confused sometimes.
Intelligence
"Who is the president of the United States?" Brownlee quizzes the two digital assistants and, like the signature Google product that it is, Google Assistant quickly reads out the answer. Siri, however, simply pulls up search results from Bing.
The followup question of "How tall is he?" was immediately picked up by Google Assistant as referring to Barack Obama, thanks to context clues. With Siri, Brownlee had to ask again in detail: "How tall is President Obama?"
When asked, however, about Tesla stock prices and "Who won the Super Bowl?" Siri yielded a more data-driven response complete with a graph of the stock market, or the score card of the game. Google Assistant just provided the exact info with no special graphics.
Personality
Because Google has specifically hired joke writers to put a creative spin on Google Assistant, the service is understandably quirkier and funnier in its responses when necessary. Instead of just pulling up data from the device owner's search query, Google Assistant can determine the context of a conversation as though it were a real person.
Siri, in contrast, sounds more stiff, though she remains the reliable, nerdy assistant that most iPhone users have come to love.
When Brownlee told Google Assistant "Make me a sandwich," the digital persona quipped, "You're a sandwich!"
Verdict
For users who prefer a chattier and even more humorous sidekick, whether to help you with important tasks or just to hang out and joke with, Google Assistant is definitely the best pick.
For users who want a more straightforward (albeit a little less conversational) assistant that can pull up graphs while spitting out stock prices, Siri still is the real deal.
Watch Google Assistant and Siri face off in the video below:
