• Microsoft's answer to Siri unveiled
    48 replies, posted
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26855113[/url] [quote][B]Microsoft has unveiled a virtual assistant for Windows Phone handsets.[/B] The voice-controlled app, named Cortana, uses both the firm's search engine Bing and data stored on the handsets to make personalised recommendations and carry out tasks. Apple and Google already offer comparable facilities on their iOS and Android platforms. But one artificial intelligence expert said Microsoft's decision to wait until now to launch could prove wise. "Siri and Google Now have a limited ability to extract the actual meaning from the words that somebody speaks," explained Prof Steve Young, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge. "So, if you ask about things that Siri, for example, knows about like restaurants or baseball games, it works pretty well. "But if you ask it about something that it's not been previously programmed to understand it simply passes the word into a search engine. "I understand that for Cortana Microsoft has done a lot of work to automatically learn a much wider range of semantics... so the expectation is that it will be able to understand a good deal more." The female-voiced Cortana - named after the AI system in the firm's Halo video game franchise - was unveiled by Windows Phone chief Joe Belfiore at the firm's Build developers conference in San Francisco. It will initially be made available in the US, then next the UK and China and finally other markets as part of a wider Windows Phone 8.1 system software update. [B] Anticipatory app [/B] Cortana replaces the earlier search function on smartphones running Microsoft's operating system. When launched from a pulsating button on the handset's start screen, it initially offers its own suggestion for the task the owner might want to carry out based on their location and past behaviour. It can then be asked to do this or instead instructed to find other information, schedule appointments, set reminders or make other apps carry out the person's command. If the user allows the software to access their calendar, email, contacts and browsing history the app will try to anticipate their needs. For instance it can offer to schedule a flight if it spots a message received from a travel booking service, and flag news articles it thinks the user will be interested in. However, if some of the inferences it makes are wrong the user can enter a "notebook" function to amend the rules it follows. "The point is the user is in control of his or her relationship with Cortana," Mr Belfiore explained. [B]Launch glitches[/B] The notebook function can also be used to inform Cortana of which friends and family are members of the owner's "inner circle" and when their "quiet hours" are. The app will then limit who can reach the user during the prescribed time to the selected group but require others to leave a message. Mr Belfiore also carried out a demonstration showing how Cortana could be told to remind him to ask his sister about her new dog the next time they spoke. He explained an alert would then appear the next time they communicated by voice, text or email. He also showed how the software could interact with specially adapted third party apps. A request to see what a person had been up to saw Cortana launch Facebook and bring up the relevant friend's activity timeline. But other parts of the presentation went less smoothly. The app repeatedly failed to convert the weather forecast from Celsius to Kelvin, and also misunderstood a request to make a phone call. For situations such as this, Mr Belfiore noted that instructions could be typed rather than spoken. He added that thanks to machine learning, the more people who interacted with Cortana the better it should get. But one company watcher was concerned by what he saw. "It has to be better than the competition for people to want to switch," said Lawrence Lundy, a tech specialist at the consultancy Frost and Sullivan. "Siri and Google Now are going to get better as more people continue to use those services. My fear is that the Windows Phone user-base isn't as big, so it won't advance as quickly. "Certainly it's not a good enough product to make people want to move to Windows Phone at this stage." [/quote] Why call it Cortana? They should call it Cuntflaps, to start fights in pubs.
Times like this I wish Bungie could sue them. Microsoft's just the publisher, after all.
[QUOTE=archangel125;44431013]Times like this I wish Bungie could sue them. Microsoft's just the publisher, after all.[/QUOTE] Microsoft owns the halo ip
[QUOTE=archangel125;44431013]Times like this I wish Bungie could sue them. Microsoft's just the publisher, after all.[/QUOTE] But Bungie doesn't make Halo anymore and presumably lost the rights to the characters. Also Microsoft totally owns the Halo IP.
I never use Siri and I find doing things manually way faster and more socially acceptable than using a voice operated "AI"
[QUOTE=The Baconator;44431141]I never use Siri and I find doing things manually way faster and [B]more socially acceptable[/B] than using a voice operated "AI"[/QUOTE] This aspect of voice control is going to gradually fade away as the technology becomes more reliable and starts to be used more.
Wow. Wat. Siri is like 2-4 years old now. I can't even remember.
[QUOTE=MatheusMCardoso;44431168]Siri is like 2-4 years old now.[/QUOTE] Oh shit, she didn't look that young in those stag movies I watched Maybe she suffers from Werner syndrome or something
Why? I literally never see anyone actually using Siri/equivalent. Nobody really uses it, it's just a dick waving competition for phone companies. I actually do occasionally use google now to set alarms but it still seems like a massive waste of resources for companies to keep making stuff like this.
Google Now is like the most competent of all these services. It's not a gross broken conglomeration of cloud computed "AI", just a simple knowledge engine and productivity tool, which is what all these awful Siri alternatives should be
[QUOTE=The Baconator;44431141]I never use Siri and I find doing things manually way faster and more socially acceptable than using a voice operated "AI"[/QUOTE] but then nobody in the starbucks will know I just bought an iphone 5s I hope that with time these things will become smarter and more functional, I remember a while ago ('07?) I made an AIML-based chatbot that communicated through some third party software I had to perform computer tasks if I first addressed it with a name (like how on android now you first have to say 'hi galaxy' to activate the listening, when in the proper app). Because it was AIML I could amuse friends by having them hold a conversation with it, though the novelty wore off fast because it had to be actively listening through the program. I think it would be cool if I could get something like that running again, rig up my house a bit
I have a hard time taking it seriously when they model it after Cortana.
This took much longer than it should have.
-snip-
[QUOTE=The Baconator;44431141]I never use Siri and I find doing things manually way faster and more socially acceptable than using a voice operated "AI"[/QUOTE] Siri is faster at doing things for me. At least I find it a lot easier to say "give me directions for x" or "set alarm for x" than going through apps and menus. Obviously doesn't work in really noisy environments, and the texting aspect is best when you're on your own or outdoors. Siri is a bit slow compared to Google Now, but the technology will improve
I wonder if they will be using this in conjunction with that on-the-fly translation software that they demonstrated in 2012.. That would be above, and beyond Siri. [video=youtube;Nu-nlQqFCKg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-nlQqFCKg[/video]
I occasionally use Siri, if I'm walking along and it's too cold/i'm too lazy to take my hands out and open the music app, I just hold the button on my headphones and tell it to play an artist or album or whatever My main use for Siri is to make it say goofy things over teamspeak by holding my phone to the mic
If Jen Taylor really is doing the voice work then I'll use it forever.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XevRbfJ4AQ0[/media] that TTS is actually pretty damn good
I actually use voice for Google now a lot and it works great. Especially when I'm drunk.
[QUOTE=Mombasa;44433515]If Jen Taylor really is doing the voice work then I'll use it forever.[/QUOTE] apparently the phonemes are actually based from her voice acting
[QUOTE=archangel125;44431013]Times like this I wish Bungie could sue them. Microsoft's just the publisher, after all.[/QUOTE] It was codenamed Cortana for internal development. When this information got leaked, the community pushed for it to keep the same name on release.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;44431141]I never use Siri and I find doing things manually way faster and more socially acceptable than using a voice operated "AI"[/QUOTE] I always find it humorous when people keep trying to use voice controls and it gets it wrong. "Call Bill" "Playing Call Me" "No, Call Bill" "I'm sorry I didn't understand" "Call.......Bill" "Calling Jill" "No call Bill" After a while you realize had they just hit Bill and hit call they would have finished the phone call by this point.
also comes with the unique ability to hack into covenant security networks on the go
That's actually pretty well done, props to them
I can find a use for this. It'd be much easier to press it and said "Get me directions to Sara's house," instead of opening up her contact, tapping her address, loading directions, and then loading navigation.
[QUOTE=Bazsil;44433746]also comes with the unique ability to hack into covenant security networks on the go[/QUOTE] to develop more on this, basically the OS allows you to connect to public WiFi networks bypassing annoying welcome screens that require you to input personal data. You give the phone a set of personal data to fill in (phone, email, number, etc) and it will fill it in for you directly. Pretty neat.
"Cortana" Woah...cool! :dance: "...is powered by Bing." :suicide:
[QUOTE=IGotWorms;44435422]"Cortana" Woah...cool! :dance: "...is powered by Bing." :suicide:[/QUOTE] Being powered by Bing makes it pretty much 1:1 to being powered by Google. :v:
Well, look on the not-so-bright-but-still-positive-side: Even if "Cortana" bombs harder than ever, it'll still get us one itty-bitty-baby-step closer to having a voice-controlled assistant program that's actually competent. For every failure, there's always someone who looks at it and says, "I can do better." We gotta slog through the shitty years of this technology before we can get to the good versions. That's how it usually works, start off with some shit, refine it into gold piece by piece. Maybe "Cortana" will be the next good iteration of this technology, worth the time, effort and expense of its creation and use. Maybe it'll be worthless garbage whose only purpose is to inspire the next group to try this sort of thing. Either way, it'll get us closer and closer to innovation, albeit the "good" path will speed things up more.
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