Yahoo has been keeping busy these days and we're not just talking about acquisitions. On Wednesday, a video went online purportedly showcasing Yahoo's voice-controlled digital assistant that might challenge Siri and Google Now.
Apparently, the popular virtual assistants have nothing to worry about for now, since the app in the video was not made by Yahoo, though the company has its fingerprints all over it.
The video first posted on the tech blog Android Police featured a man driving off to work and using the virtual assistant to check traffic and send a text message. The "Y!" icon that appears on the top right of the screen might have misled everyone, especially after Yahoo announced on December 2 that it bought Skyphrase, a company known for its natural language processing technology.
"We now have evidence that Yahoo! is putting their language processing powers to the test with a voice-controlled assistant app which includes predictive information, like Google Now with some of the conversational prowess of Siri," the Android Police reported. "So far, we can tell that Yahoo's assistant will be able to inform you of travel time and traffic delays, send (and edit) messages intuitively, and find you the perfect date spot on short notice."
TechCrunch was able to contact Yahoo to verify if it owns or has commissioned the development of the featured virtual assistant.
"We did some digging and sources familiar with Yahoo's internal projects tell us that the video is fake. Whoever made it has some interesting ideas, and video making chops, but that's about it," wrote Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch.
However, upon digging further, TechCrunch found out that the digital personal assistant in the video is indeed real and was developed by Robin Labs in collaboration with Yahoo. The startup developed a navigation app that launched in 2012 and the second stage of its work involves introducing a Siri-like voice assistant in the mix.
"The idea is that brands could offer their content to their audiences, wrapped in voice-interactive UI. We've been in conversations with them. But our white-label platform was not commissioned by Yahoo," explained Robin Labs co-founder Ilya Eckstein.
"We are having an ongoing conversation with Yahoo. Somehow, the video has leaked out after we'd sent it to Yahoo," Eckstein added.
Yahoo! Voice Assistant
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