A Smarter Siri: What to Know About 'Viv' Before AI's Introduction to the World on Monday
The creators of Siri, the sometimes-smart AI assistant running on Apple iPhones since 2011, have another AI up their sleeve. They're going to introduce their next generation AI, "Viv," to the world next Monday.
Here's what we know in advance, thanks to a Washington Post "profile" of Viv released on Thursday.
Siri Evolved
It's tempting to think of Viv as just the next Siri, but hopefully not as easily confused by accents, vocal quirks, or simple background noise. But the two co-creators of Siri, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer -- who co-founded Viv Labs to create its namesake AI shortly after they sold Siri to Apple -- are hinting that Viv could be a lot more than just a smarter Siri, Alexa, M, Cortana, or Google Now.
In fact, Viv Labs told the Washington Post that the ultimate goal for Viv is to be a ubiquitous interface to do anything through the mobile Internet, through the most seamless interface humans ever created: simple conversation.
"It's about taking the way that humans have naturally interacted with each other for thousands of years and applying that to the way they interact with services," said Kittlaus. "Everyone knows how to hold a conversation."
More Than 'Smart Siri'
If that sounds like Siri 2.0, you're right.
But Kittlaus told The Guardian earlier this year that the implications of getting a virtual assistant or AI to the capability that it can serve anything up to users -- be it information from a Wikipedia article, directions to the nearest grocery store, or a pizza that's ordered and delivered without downloading an app or navigating an online menu -- will be transformative.
"What happens when you have a system that is 10,000 more capable?" said Kittlaus to The Guardian about the difference between Viv and other current AI assistants. "It will shift the economics of the Internet."
And the Post report bears some of this out in one example of Viv's first real test: ordering a pizza.
In the test, Viv was able to understand a complicated, plain language request full of different levels of specificity: "Get me a pizza from Pizz'a Chicago near my office."
According to the story, Viv not only understood the command, it responded by asking what toppings they wanted. Viv's engineers answered with more levels of complex information like "half cheese," "pepperoni," "Caesar salad," along with more commands to taking back some toppings and changing the size of the pizza.
Viv managed to get almost all of it right, except the office's address at first -- and the pizzas later arrived without calling, Google searching, typing anything, or downloading and subscribing to a delivery app.
Big Buzz From Big Players
That's just ordering pizza, which may not seem too impressive.
And it's easy (and not uncommon) for tech entrepreneurs to talk about how their service or app will "change the world." It's much harder to gauge how much of that is truth and how much is bluster.
So here's an indication of what's coming with Viv, and how valuable (i.e., disruptive) it could be: Viv hasn't been publicly demonstrated yet, but Google and Facebook have reportedly already made impressive acquisition offers.
It makes sense from an investment angle, but possibly the case of Google's offer as self-preservation might hint at the capabilities of Viv.
As SearchEngineLand noted on the Post story, "If this doesn't sound like Google or a replacement for Google, I'm not sure what does."