Thoughts on the Future of Voice
When there’s something you need to do, just ask Siri...
When my new i Phone 4S a r r i ve d , I couldn’t stop playing with Siri, the new iphone voice-recognition ‘virtual assistant’ that was introduced with the device. According to Apple, Siri is an iphone feature that lets me use my voice to send messages, place phone calls, schedule meetings, and more. It understands what I say, knows what I mean, and even talks back. It’s not bullet-proof and has some glitches—but it really works!
Last night, I was driving home and asked Siri to remind me to buy milk when I leave office. The moment I stepped into my car, a reminder popped to buy milk. I didn’t have to tell Siri, where I was or when I would be leaving. The system used my location and knew I was moving from that location. Way to go, Siri!
So, then I started asking myself, is voice the future of interaction? Voice recognition software has existed as long as I can remember. It is quite obvious that the natural language processing is evolving and we can see it on Google voice search, Microsoft speech APIS, etc. Many new cars have voice control, so I wondered, what makes Siri different? Without going into the deep-level architecture of Siri, we assume that Siri relies on its servers, processing the sentence I said, and creating a response that might be used by an artificial intelligence engine and voice recognition engine. So what’s so special about Siri?
My answer to that is, in the same way the touchscreens and user interfaces evolved and changed the way we interact with our devices, it seems like voice will change the way we interact with our devices and connect to the web. Although Siri is still in beta and has some issues, it is an enormous step towards bringing our voice to the front.
Siri also lays down some ground rules: you always need to be connected to the network, otherwise it just won’t work. One can argue that this is a great disadvantage—for example, it makes no sense if you just want to use it to set a reminder for a wake-up call. But the feature is set up with the assumption that we are constantly connected to the internet. In my mind it is fair assumption that goes side-by-side with cloud computing and other areas in that landscape that are advancing forward.
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What Next?
I want to be able to post to Twitter and Facebook just by saying my tweets and status updates aloud, and even upload my pictures by saying it. Well, there is already a way. Although it requires some set-up, I found step-by-step instructions to connect my Twitter account and Facebook using voice-to text-feature via Siri.
I would not be surprised if this functionality is updated in IOS (iphone operating system) and social media websites in the near future.
What about sharing an article with my peers? It would be great if I could just say, “Share this article with Bryan.” That would save me 2 clicks—one for the share and one for choosing who I want to share with. And if I want to share a specific paragraph and express my opinion on work-related material: “Siri, please share this article with David and ask him what he thinks about the topic on page three.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could manage and share content using our voice and exchange ideas?
Last but not least, I wonder if within the next 5-10 years systems like Siri will be able to talk to CRM systems on our behalf. Wouldn’t it be great if I could tell Siri that I have issues with my bill—“talk to my service provider and ask him about this specific charge, and submit a dispute if possible.” Can Siri truly be my personal assistant? That would really be a game changer. The author is head, Amdocs India
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