Siri facts for kids
Siri running on iOS 15.
|
|
| Original author(s) | Siri Inc. |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Apple |
| Initial release | October 4, 2011 |
| Operating system | iOS 5 onward, macOS Sierra onward, tvOS (all versions), watchOS (all versions), iPadOS |
| Platform |
|
| Available in | |
| Type | Intelligent personal assistant |
Siri (/ˈsiːri, ˈsɪri/ see-REE-,_-SIRR-ee) is the digital assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, audioOS, and visionOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of Internet services. With continued use, it adapts to users' individual language usages, searches, and preferences, returning individualized results.
Siri is a spin-off from a project developed by the SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center. Its speech recognition engine was provided by Nuance Communications, and it uses advanced machine learning technologies to function. Its original American, British, and Australian voice actors recorded their respective voices around 2005, unaware of the recordings' eventual usage. Siri was released as an app for iOS in February 2010. Two months later, Apple acquired it and integrated it into the iPhone 4s at its release on 4 October 2011, removing the separate app from the iOS App Store. Siri has since been an integral part of Apple's products, having been adapted into other hardware devices including newer iPhone models, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, AirPods, Apple TV, HomePod, and Apple Vision Pro.
Siri supports a wide range of user commands, including performing phone actions, checking basic information, scheduling events and reminders, handling device settings, searching the Internet, navigating areas, finding information on entertainment, and being able to engage with iOS-integrated apps. With the release of iOS 10, in 2016, Apple opened up limited third-party access to Siri, including third-party messaging apps, as well as payments, ride-sharing, and Internet calling apps. With the release of iOS 11, Apple updated Siri's voice and added support for follow-up questions, language translation, and additional third-party actions. iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 enabled users to activate Siri by simply saying “Siri”, while the previous command, “Hey Siri”, is still supported.
Siri's original release on iPhone 4s in 2011 received mixed reviews. It received praise for its voice recognition and contextual knowledge of user information, including calendar appointments, but was criticized for requiring stiff user commands and having a lack of flexibility. It was also criticized for lacking information on certain nearby places and for its inability to understand certain English accents. In 2016 and 2017, a number of media reports said that Siri lacked innovation, particularly against new competing voice assistants. The reports concerned Siri's limited set of features, "bad" voice recognition, and undeveloped service integrations as causing trouble for Apple in the field of artificial intelligence and cloud-based services; the basis for the complaints reportedly due to stifled development, as caused by Apple's prioritization of user privacy and executive power struggles within the company. Its launch was also overshadowed by the death of Steve Jobs, which occurred one day after the launch.
Development
Siri is a spin-out from the Stanford Research Institute’s Artificial Intelligence Center and is an offshoot of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA)-funded CALO project. SRI International used the NABC Framework to define the value proposition for Siri. It was co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Tom Gruber, and UCLA alumnus Adam Cheyer. Kittlaus named Siri after a co-worker in Norway; the name is a short form of the name Sigrid, from Old Norse Sigríðr, composed of the elements sigr "victory" and fríðr "beautiful".
Siri's speech recognition engine was provided by Nuance Communications, a speech technology company. Neither Apple nor Nuance acknowledged this for years, until Nuance CEO Paul Ricci confirmed it at a 2013 technology conference. The speech recognition system uses sophisticated machine learning techniques, including convolutional neural networks and long short-term memory.
The initial Siri prototype was implemented using the Active platform, a joint project between the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International and the Vrai Group at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The Active platform was the focus of a Ph.D. thesis led by Didier Guzzoni, who joined Siri as its chief scientist.
Siri was acquired by Apple Inc. in April 2010 under the direction of Steve Jobs. Apple's first notion of a digital personal assistant appeared in a 1987 concept video, Knowledge Navigator.
Apple Intelligence
Voices
The original American voice of Siri was recorded in July 2005 by Susan Bennett, who was unaware it would eventually be used for the voice assistant. A report from The Verge in September 2013 about voice actors, their work, and machine learning developments, hinted that Allison Dufty was the voice behind Siri, but this was disproven when Dufty wrote on her website that she was "absolutely, positively not the voice of Siri." Citing growing pressure, Bennett revealed her role as Siri in October, and her claim was confirmed by Ed Primeau, an American audio forensics expert. Apple has never acknowledged it.
The original British male voice was provided by Jon Briggs, a former technology journalist and for 12 years narrated for the hit BBC quiz show The Weakest Link. After discovering he was Siri's voice by watching television, he first spoke about the role in November 2011. He acknowledged that the voice work was done "five or six years ago", and that he didn't know how the recordings would be used.
The original Australian voice was provided by Karen Jacobsen, a voice-over artist known in Australia as the GPS girl.
In an interview between all three voice actors and The Guardian, Briggs said that "the original system was recorded for a US company called Scansoft, who were then bought by Nuance. Apple simply licensed it."
For iOS 11, Apple auditioned hundreds of candidates to find new female voices, then recorded several hours of speech, including different personalities and expressions, to build a new text-to-speech voice based on deep learning technology. In February 2022, Apple added Quinn, its first gender-neutral voice as a fifth user option, to the iOS 15.4 developer release.
Integration
Siri released as a stand-alone application for the iOS operating system in February 2010, and at the time, the developers were also intending to release Siri for Android and BlackBerry devices. Two months later, Apple acquired Siri. On October 4, 2011, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with a beta version of Siri. After the announcement, Apple removed the existing standalone Siri app from App Store. TechCrunch wrote that, though the Siri app supports iPhone 4, its removal from App Store might also have had a financial aspect for the company, in providing an incentive for customers to upgrade devices. Third-party developer Steven Troughton-Smith, however, managed to port Siri to iPhone 4, though without being able to communicate with Apple's servers. A few days later, Troughton-Smith, working with an anonymous person nicknamed "Chpwn", managed to fully hack Siri, enabling its full functionalities on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch devices. Additionally, developers were also able to successfully create and distribute legal ports of Siri to any device capable of running iOS 5, though a proxy server was required for Apple server interaction.
Over the years, Apple has expanded the line of officially supported products, including newer iPhone models, as well as iPad support in June 2012, iPod Touch support in September 2012, Apple TV support, and the stand-alone Siri Remote, in September 2015, Mac and AirPods support in September 2016, and HomePod support in February 2018.
Features and options
Apple offers a wide range of voice commands to interact with Siri, including, but not limited to:
- Phone and text actions, such as "Call Sarah", "Read my new messages", "Set the timer for 10 minutes", and "Send email to mom"
- Check basic information, including "What's the weather like today?" and "How many dollars are in a euro?"
- Find basic facts, including "How many people live in France?" and "How tall is Mount Everest?". Siri usually uses Wikipedia to answer.
- Schedule events and reminders, including "Schedule a meeting" and "Remind me to ..."
- Handle device settings, such as "Take a picture", "Turn off Wi-Fi", and "Increase the brightness"
- Search the Internet, including "Define ...", "Find pictures of ...", and "Search Twitter for ..."
- Navigation, including "Take me home", "What's the traffic like on the way home?", and "Find driving directions to ..."
- Translate words and phrases from English to a few languages, such as "How do I say where is the nearest hotel in French?"
- Entertainment, such as "What basketball games are on today?", "What are some movies playing near me?", and "What's the synopsis of ...?"
- Engage with iOS-integrated apps, including "Pause Apple Music" and "Like this song"
- Handle payments through Apple Pay, such as "Apple Pay 25 dollars to Mike for concert tickets" or "Send 41 dollars to Ivana."
- Share ETA with others.
Siri also offers numerous pre-programmed responses to amusing questions. Such questions include "What is the meaning of life?" to which Siri may reply "All evidence to date suggests it's chocolate"; "Why am I here?", to which it may reply "I don't know. Frankly, I've wondered that myself"; and "Will you marry me?", to which it may respond with "My End User Licensing Agreement does not cover marriage. My apologies."
Initially limited to female voices, Apple announced in June 2013 that Siri would feature a gender option, adding a male voice counterpart.
In September 2014, Apple added the ability for users to speak "Hey Siri" to enable the assistant without the requirement of physically handling the device.
In September 2015, the "Hey Siri" feature was updated to include individualized voice recognition, a presumed effort to prevent non-owner activation.
With the announcement of iOS 10 in June 2016, Apple opened up limited third-party developer access to Siri through a dedicated application programming interface (API). The API restricts the usage of Siri to engaging with third-party messaging apps, payment apps, ride-sharing apps, and Internet calling apps.
In iOS 11, Siri is able to handle follow-up questions, supports language translation, and opens up to more third-party actions, including task management. Additionally, users are able to type to Siri, and a new, privacy-minded "on-device learning" technique improves Siri's suggestions by privately analyzing personal usage of different iOS applications.
iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 allows users to simply say "Siri" to initiate Siri, and the virtual assistant now supports back to back requests, allowing users to issue multiple requests and conversations without reactivating it. In the public beta versions of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, Apple added support for bilingual queries to Siri.
iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and MacOS 15 Sequoia will bring artificial intelligence, integrated with ChatGPT, to Siri. Apple call this "Apple Intelligence".
See also
In Spanish: Siri para niños
- List of speech recognition software
- Amazon Alexa
