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The popular iPhone assistant, Siri, has a little brother. And we say small because it has just arrived, although its aspirations are to become big, multiplatform and really useful for all users. Her name is Viv and she has just shown her paw at the Disrup event of the US mediaTechCrunch, showing all its potential at the hands of its creator and also father of Siri, Dag KittlausOf course, still in development.
This is a new assistant that is committed to taking what is seen in Siri and a step further Google Now for different reasons. The main one is the intelligence that Viv has shown during her demonstration in front of the gallery, and that is that she has a natural language technology that not only allows users to recognize commands or queries, but is also able to read between the lines Thus, along with the recognition of the user's voice to understand what is being asked, Viv also recognizes the intent of the question , creating a context that helps you find the specific data that the user is looking for , and not just a generic answer with information related to the question.
But there's more. This technology, which allows to create a context, helps Viv to follow the thread of conversations and to add data and reference points to show information of interest or to answer on the same subject.Without launching evasions or needing the user to ask each time for a specific piece of information. All this in continuous user learning.
During the presentation, part of these qualities were represented with the question “will it be more than 30 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after five in the afternoon the day after tomorrow ?”, to which Viv replied “no, it won't be that warm” A simple answer after a complex analysis of the user's message that forces the assistant to consult the application Weather Underground, take into account the date, time, location and user intent. A sample of the complexity of the process that is carried out to achieve a natural language with a machine.
Of course, at the moment Viv has no voice, so the demo only showed written messages.Even so, Viv can make payments, book hotels or even request Uber vehicles All this thanks to the fact that it is designed as a platform, where developers can integrate a API or development tool for this wizard to interact directly with your applications and the content they handle. Something that Google Now has also been in development for some time.
The mission of Viv is to satisfy the needs of any user, without importing the mobile platform in the one they find But not only that, it also aspires to be present on other devices and devices. Perhaps for this reason, rumors suggest that it has received investments from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, although this fact has not been confirmed. For now it is still in development, without an official date for its arrivalA process that has been taking several years now. And it is that developing all the technology and Artificial Intelligence behind an assistant is hard and long work, even more so if you aspire to conquer a market where there are strong alternatives .
