do you think siri will ever get to the level of Alexa and google home?

By Troy, 18 May, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Out of all of the AI devices I own I would rank siri at the bottom. Siri doesn't sing, can't play games and do other things that other AI devices like Alexa and google can do.
Do you think Siri will ever get an upgrade to be consistant with the other AI devices out there? I would hope so but my hopes aren't too high as it seems like Siri technology is still in the dark ages. You would think with the homepod apple would at least upgrade her so she can be more fun to use.

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Comments

By roman on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

Hello. I really do not have any high hope either. google and alexa are much better than siri.

By Brad on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

I don't really use Siri and don't find her to be that smart.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

Unless Apple starts gorging itself on user data the way Google and Amazon do, I doubt it'll ever get to their level.

By Chris on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

Unless Apple puts significant effort into improving it, I don't think so. It's sad that Apple was the one to first come out with this tech. They said how awesome voice tech was going to be, but now look at them. Their competitors have blown them out of the water as far as I'm concerned.

By Jeff on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

I don't think Apple considers Siri to be competing with other voice assistants. I think they see Siri as a tool to enhance their ecosystem. They provide Siri shortcuts so app developers can take advantage of Siri in their apps, but I don't think Apple ever intends to make Siri a full-fledged voice assistant like Alexa or Google Assistant.

By peter on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

One big advantage of Siri is that it can be connectede to custom and/or off the shelf shortcuts. Although one can create some very simple skills with Alexa, this doesn't offer nearly the flexibility of Siri shortcuts.

Siri can also be used to totally control one's device using "Voice Control". I don't think either Google or Amazon offer this.

I don't think Siri was meant as a game playing bot, but it does seamlessly connect to a number of other more serious services. Google seems to be the best at ansering informational questions while Alexa seems to be more of a "friend" with which one can interact. so I think there are tradeoffs among the various AI solutions.

--Pete

By Joe on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

Agree completely with you Peter. I think shortcuts really makes Siri more powerful than the other 2. Seriously what do you all do with Alexa and Google that is so amazing? My use cases for them is to play the radio Siri can now do that. I actually have a shortcut o I just say start airplay Siri runs it connects to my speaker and I'm ready to go then I have a shortcut that says back to Iphone where it moves audio back to my Iphone. I find that faster than using control center. I also have a shortcut where I just say FTP and it launches filebrowser and actually opens my FTP address and puts me in its home folder system. I have another command simular to get me to my time capcil.

I agree. The big two share most of their capabilities. Both are excellent at all of the basic assistant things like weather and calendar management. There's a glut of home-automation support for both. Assistant excels in web search, and Alexa has a wider set of "skills" addons. Also, the latter is nice for buying stuff if you're a frequent amazon user, or if you want a way to easily listen to Audible content.

Siri isn't totally useless, but it definitely falls behind the other two. That said, the only voice assistant that may be able to rival Siri in local device control is Bixby, and as far behind as Siri is, it doesn't have the same stigma attached to it as Samsung's offering. Siri also supposedly offers greater privacy, for what that's worth.

By Troy on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

I would like to be able to use my ring system with siri. As far as I know currently ring support for the home kit is not available.

By Haroon Probst on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

Not very likely. That Siri will be any better than it gets.
Most of the Siri teem that were on the project after apple purchased the original company who had created Siri in the first place... ended up jumping ship and went to samsung. They created the personal assistant called Bigsby which is shipped on their android devices.
I know this to be a fact... as I attended a conference for various projects concerning artificial intelligence including speaking devices.

By Trenton Matthews on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

if you had a Galaxy S8 with Android Oreo on it, Bixby was able to auto post to Twitter, had a similar feature to Apple's Voice Control, and you were able to make your own chat responses. (similar to Amazon Alexa Blue Prints.)

For more details with Bixby these days, see

https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/bixby/

By Trenton Matthews on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

As for Siri getting an upgrade in iOS 14?

Hmmm... For now it is unknown.
Only Siri and Alexa read most of a Wikipedia article (something that Google and Bixby both don't do.)

By Roxann Pollard on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

I agree with Pete. All of the AI services have their strengthes and weaknesses. In a perfect world, all AI services would be capable of doing everything we could ask of them, no matter which one we use. But, of course this isn't the case. Fortunately, we have the choice as to which AI services we choose. Yes, we have to invest in the appropriate products in order to take advantage, but this is the case for any other services that aren't considered to be AI in nature. No matter how we look at it, technological advances do help us, even if we must combine a few services to support what we want to do.

By Holger Fiallo on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 03:39

They are just a nice things but if she does not work well, what is the point. Apple need to sepnd money to get siri to the lebel of lady A. A real AI will not happen until quanton PC comes out. Todays PC or software are not enough.