13 ms·

Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

241 points by coloneltcb 10y ago

Fricken 10y ago
The AI platform that wins won't necessarily be the one that provides the most utility. It'll be the one that people bond with emotionally. I'm not talking about you here- I'm talking about teenage girls with self esteem issues, recently landed immigrants working as night janitors, divorcees with drinking problems, and anyone else who needs a friend. It's a technical challenge now, but in a few years making a good AI will be high art. By a few years I could mean 3 years or 23 years. There's the possibility that dressing an AI assistant up in a personality that asks 'how are you feeling?' could lead us into an uncanny valley that takes a long time to cross.
- notyourwork 10y ago
  I agree I think the next evolution is a relationship with the AI. We are at a point where with enough effort and data these AI can answer your questions and preemptively tell you thinks that are relevant. If someone can build something you grow empathy and compassion for it will most certainly be a winner.
- Yodoshi 10y ago
  During Google's hardware/AI Assistant a point was made about wanting google assistant to emote based on context and be personal to the user, 'A personal google for everyone. This plays to your suggestion of emotional bonding being a key need for AI assistant's. Though having it called 'Google assistant' seems to break that connection, though imagine something is in the pipeline being tested and analysed over and over to see what works with AI connecting with a user.
  - Fricken 10y ago
    If you think people are concerned with privacy now, an AI that people -kids- are spilling their deepest darkest secrets to will really creep us out. It's probably best left to a third party to skin the Google assistant with soft skills. A small startup can afford to gamble on these things. Google (or Viv, Facebook, Cortana et al) need only provide the underlying capability, in such a way that they can wash their hands of it should it invoke a public backlash. Just so long as they're collecting the data they need to ultimately know you better than you know yourself.
  - lowglow 10y ago
    It was hilarious, especially seeing as we've had some interest from google regarding our device that we believe everyone will live and grow with. I envision a world where people will be born with their AI companions that will learn who they are and help them grow in the best ways. :)
  - xenobioticants 10y ago
    Which Google has made exactly zero progress towards. Google Now has access to a lot more data and is a lot more useful than Siri, but if you curse at Siri for doing something wrong, she (it? they should really gender AI's.. helps with bonding) says she was only trying to help. Ask her if she watches GoT.. she gives you a quip about Lannisters. If I ask her what track is playing, she says 'let me have a listen'. Google Now just gives a beep and displays a bouncy colored wave. I can ask Siri 'do I need to wear a jacket tommorow' and it'll give me the forecast. Google just displays a search result with that particular sentence.
- aRationalMoose 10y ago
  I actually think this is where googles assistant falls flat. "Speaking" with google doens't feel as natural as it does for Alexa, Cortana or even Siri. Part of the humanization i think, is the name. That's been the case for me anyway. Saying "Hey google" feels less natural than saying "Hey Alexa"
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    That looks like a minor point, but I think it underscores Google's cultural problem. Google has had so many failures in the calendar/blog/assistant space because Google doesn't understand ordinary people. It's an elite company full of elite engineers running elite engineering projects (and a lot of search). It has no internal cultural reference point for average-IQ non-elite users. This is why Google has so bad at productising interesting ideas that Google didn't invent, and which have to deal with real competition. The software works, mostly. But users don't feel there's anything special or unique about the experience. You could argue - reasonably - this is all about perception management. Apple does well because it sells its products as stylish and magical. Even if the technological reality is mediocre, Apple has consistently managed to create a brand that is good at making technology seem humanised. Google has never understood why that kind of marketing is necessary. The technology is good, it should speak for itself. If customers don't get it - no one understands why. Now with AI, the pitch is out of key for the same reasons. Most people don't want something that anticipates their intentions, because that's just creepy. Even if it works well, it creates an experience of diminished control and empowerment. It's like someone saying "Trust me" when they're promising you something new, but they've never given you a reason to. Does the AI know you well enough to make the right decisions? Why would it? Unless Google can dramatise that it does, reliably, they're not going anywhere with this one, no matter how good the technology really is.
Adam_O 10y ago
That reminds me of an interview i saw a few months ago with one of their main guys: https://charlierose.com/videos/28249 https://charlierose.com/videos/28249
thowAway7890 10y ago
Viv still uses Nuance according to their last demo, viv seems to be just a developers platform. Even Siri does not use Nuance anymore. Samsung probably needs developers for their IoT products in order to compete. Pixel's new assistant will not be available on other android devices with nougat so make sense that Samsung will have to bundle their own into their devices.
- singularity2001 10y ago
  >> Siri does not use Nuance anymore evidence? It still sucks.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
falaki 10y ago
I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A consequence of that design is separating speech recognition from NLP, which makes it inherently more error-prone than Google Now.
- isaiahg 10y ago
  I imagine you'll be able to change AI much like keyboards. They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it.
  - objclxt 10y ago
    > They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it. Except in order to have Google services and the Play store you need to agree to a license with Google, which can easily mandate you not replace their stock apps with your own (or rather, not default to your own, unless the user indicates otherwise). Now, you could ship a phone without Google Play Services, but that's very unusual in the west (less so in China et al).
- jshevek 10y ago
  I agree it is unlikely that it would be able to compete with Google Now. I see Samsung having more success putting this into their appliances.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    And they have their smart watches too.
- ge96 10y ago
  I too like the movie 'Her'
- 10y ago
smegel 10y ago
John Gruber is going to love this one.
- pat2man 10y ago
  > Huge score for Samsung. Does anyone disagree that AI assistant technology is table stakes for the next decade?
- geodel 10y ago
  Indeed. He also loved the Galaxy Note 7 beating iPhone 7 with earlier launch.
  - smegel 10y ago
    It was early all right.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
choicewords 10y ago
Make AI startup, get acquired, quit, repeat
- itg 10y ago
  As long as the founder(s) know what they're doing. I've seen way too many AI startups with founders who don't even have the most basic ML knowledge but are doing it because it's the trend.
  - mastazi 10y ago
    Replace "ML knowledge" with "CS / SW Eng. knowledge" and I would say this has always existed in the start-up world. My personal opinion is that lack of basic technical knowledge is a major no-no unless at least one of the other co-founders is technical.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  Why not?
Everhusk 10y ago
Was really hoping to play with the dynamic code generation part of their SDK, hopefully they still get around to launching it.
jjcm 10y ago
I'm amazed that the founders didn't have some sort of non-compete agreement here. Excited that it's a more extensible digital assistant though. I think the reason why I like Alexa the most out of the services right now is that it feels like the easiest to add new functionality too. Hopefully this will pave the way for more open ai assistants.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  California doesn't believe in non-competes. The state believes that competition is in the public interest and enforcing non-competes would be counter to that.
  - Ph0X 10y ago
    But what about patents?
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      Federal law.
  - pesenti 10y ago
    That's not true. California enforces non-compete related to the sale of a company (section 16601 - http://law.onecle.com/california/business/16601.html http://law.onecle.com/california/business/16601.html).
- falaki 10y ago
  A lot of the Siri IP belonged to Stanford SRI and Siri was basically licensing it. So when Adam left Siri and started Viv, Apple couldn't do anything. Also note that, Viv rarely talked about any details of their technology. Probably they were slightly afraid. At the same time Apple didn't want to pick a fight with a small startup and damage it's reputation. It might change now that Samsung is the owner.
deagler 10y ago
This is going to be great, The worlds top firms are now in direct competition with each other. Microsoft(Cortana), Amazon(Echo), Apple(Siri), Google(Assistant/Now) and now Samsung with Viv. The possibilites are just endless, the space race netted us a lot of innovation and this should do the same. Competition leads to Innovation
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Endless? No. We will have as many incompatible proprietary offerings. That's all.
- aswanson 10y ago
  Competition is for losers. 10 years ago the battle was microsoft vs yahoo and whoever...and it turned out the ones to pay attention to were fb and twtr...etc. The big innovation, the one to dominate headlines in 10 years, is likely unknown, run by a few guys on a shoestring and barely on the radar right now.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    MS, Apple, and Google are very much still around. Twitter and Yahoo are up for sale. FB is the only innovator on your list that could be classed as a newcomer. And it's been around for more than a decade. I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed. ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power.
    - madamelic 10y ago
      >I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed. > ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power. This isn't the 1990's. AWS exists. Not to mention how hot VC is for AI startups. Sure, we won't have 15-year olds making the next AI breakthrough but to say that AI is solely in the realm of "big business" is naive.
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
Unfortunately I think it's pretty obvious why they were acquired, so 99% skeptical of their future. They were probably acquired because: 1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here. 2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays). So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
   won't let another map be the default. It doesn't matter if you have google maps installed, if you click an address apples maps open.
  - ovao 10y ago
    That depends on the application (and website) in which you're tapping the address. In some cases that will be Google Maps, if installed, in others you'll be presented with open-with options, in others still it will be Apple Maps.
    - curt15 10y ago
      Apps on iOS have to hardcode every other third-party handler that they want to work with besides Apple Maps. If an app presents you with open-with options for maps, that's because the developer took the trouble to add extra codepaths for Google Maps, HERE Maps, etc.
      - ovao 10y ago
        That's good clarification, thank you.
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
It's very disappointing that Apple got stuck with Siri and does not really improve on what they have. I assume part of it has to do with the fact that they are very careful about customer data and a lot of what makes assistants useful is having as much data in the cloud as possible. Still. As an iOS user I'm very jealous of what exists on other platforms now.
- IMcD23 10y ago
  Siri has been getting better ever since its release. Have you used it in iOS 10? It now has 3rd party integration with Uber and Lyft, Venmo, and many other apps. Its reliability and usability have drastically improved since Siri 1.0 on the iPhone 4S.
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    No integration with the apps i care about: spotify, google maps, gmail and many others.
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      Isn't that on Spotify and Google to implement?
      - julien_c 10y ago
        You have a whitelist of possible domains though (Messaging and payments being the most common for now)
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    And yet, the simplest interactions always disappoint me. I said "Create an appointment with John Smith at 2PM tomorrow". John Smith being someone who isn't in my contacts. Siri presented me with a list of my contacts that she thought I might have meant. The option "None of these" was also presented. I chose that, thinking she would just create the appointment with John Smith in the title as plain text like I wanted, and she said "All right, I'll leave it off your calendar" and that was that.
shalstvedt 10y ago
Does anyone else have the feeling that the ecosystem lock-in inherent in all of these large primarily hardware-focused companies isn't necessarily the whole future? I can imagine things like airport kiosks, coffee machines, subway terminals, hotel front desks, and other everyday objects or conglomerations of objects that aren't part of the consumer market most of these companies target also having such an interface, and they may not want to give all of that to Google or Amazon for instance. Making that software seems like a necessity to me (the "operating system" of the future) and I'm not sure how it fits in with the current trajectory. Thoughts?
- lallysingh 10y ago
  The large vendors are using phone revenue to fund fundamental conversational AI research. Eventually it'll get commiditized. Either as discoverable microservices that your favorite conversational AI finds, or as tiny ones for each device. I'm not sure which one is really worse.
S_A_P 10y ago
I'm just curious how the founders were able to somehow negotiate a deal to sell Siri and then go right back into the same arena and create a "better" version. How would apple or any company allow those terms?!?
- scarlac 10y ago
  They didn't just sell to Apple and immediately quit. They stayed around for some years, which is a common contract condition. You can't practically require people to not innovate after they left a company.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  Non-compete agreements are signed in (many) deals but they would be for a fixed term (typically 1 to 3 years?) after which, the inventors/innovators would be free to carry on further.
thedangler 10y ago
I hope they integrate it with Smarthings. Maybe make the hub a device like Google home or Echo to integrate with all the devices.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
I wonder if this is part of a move by Samsung to move off of Android? In some ways that would be a shame - the only phones I have owned are Samsung Android phones, love them. Still, Samsung is large enough to build and maintain their own stack.
- LukeB_UK 10y ago
  They've been maintaining their own set of apps that mirror Google apps on Android for a long time.
  - douche 10y ago
    They are hot garbage, too. It's really ridiculous, you get a new Samsung phone and it has the default google/android apps, a copycat set of Samsung apps, and often a third set of carrier-specific apps that are even more of a dumpster fire.
camillomiller 10y ago
Dag kittlaus & friends placed two successful AI exits in ten years. Just wow.
aerovistae 10y ago
For how much they hyped their product this is a pretty inconspicuous exit.
te_chris 10y ago
So the value in AI startups is basically the number of ML/AI scientists you have times X million/scientist these days (perhaps multiplied by some sort of factor that measures the promise of your usually-not-working product). Given this, wouldn't it make sense for AI/ML people to form a guild and/or union and capture this value themselves, rather than let smooth-talking founders take all the cash?
douche 10y ago
Crap, another piece of preinstalled bloatware I won't be able to remove from my next phone without rooting it.
jheriko 10y ago
if this one doesn't turn itself on when its in my pocket, and doesn't start phoning random people without any speech like noises happening, i can see this being slightly less of a gimmick than siri... :P kudos to these guys though, i never followed their story after apple took them on, and just assumed they would still be there. selling something then going back to doing the same thing, and doing it better... i find that admirable. also despite my opinion on siri being "doesn't even work, not even close" i do look forward to more and better developments in that direction. although a part of me wonders if we won't just be wiring ourselves directly into our devices by the time this sort of tech becomes truly useful. :)

241 points by coloneltcb 10y ago

The AI platform that wins won't necessarily be the one that provides the most utility. It'll be the one that people bond with emotionally. I'm not talking about you here- I'm talking about teenage girls with self esteem issues, recently landed immigrants working as night janitors, divorcees with drinking problems, and anyone else who needs a friend. It's a technical challenge now, but in a few years making a good AI will be high art. By a few years I could mean 3 years or 23 years. There's the possibility that dressing an AI assistant up in a personality that asks 'how are you feeling?' could lead us into an uncanny valley that takes a long time to cross.

notyourwork 10y ago
I agree I think the next evolution is a relationship with the AI. We are at a point where with enough effort and data these AI can answer your questions and preemptively tell you thinks that are relevant. If someone can build something you grow empathy and compassion for it will most certainly be a winner.
Yodoshi 10y ago
During Google's hardware/AI Assistant a point was made about wanting google assistant to emote based on context and be personal to the user, 'A personal google for everyone. This plays to your suggestion of emotional bonding being a key need for AI assistant's. Though having it called 'Google assistant' seems to break that connection, though imagine something is in the pipeline being tested and analysed over and over to see what works with AI connecting with a user.
- Fricken 10y ago
  If you think people are concerned with privacy now, an AI that people -kids- are spilling their deepest darkest secrets to will really creep us out. It's probably best left to a third party to skin the Google assistant with soft skills. A small startup can afford to gamble on these things. Google (or Viv, Facebook, Cortana et al) need only provide the underlying capability, in such a way that they can wash their hands of it should it invoke a public backlash. Just so long as they're collecting the data they need to ultimately know you better than you know yourself.
- lowglow 10y ago
  It was hilarious, especially seeing as we've had some interest from google regarding our device that we believe everyone will live and grow with. I envision a world where people will be born with their AI companions that will learn who they are and help them grow in the best ways. :)
- xenobioticants 10y ago
  Which Google has made exactly zero progress towards. Google Now has access to a lot more data and is a lot more useful than Siri, but if you curse at Siri for doing something wrong, she (it? they should really gender AI's.. helps with bonding) says she was only trying to help. Ask her if she watches GoT.. she gives you a quip about Lannisters. If I ask her what track is playing, she says 'let me have a listen'. Google Now just gives a beep and displays a bouncy colored wave. I can ask Siri 'do I need to wear a jacket tommorow' and it'll give me the forecast. Google just displays a search result with that particular sentence.
aRationalMoose 10y ago
I actually think this is where googles assistant falls flat. "Speaking" with google doens't feel as natural as it does for Alexa, Cortana or even Siri. Part of the humanization i think, is the name. That's been the case for me anyway. Saying "Hey google" feels less natural than saying "Hey Alexa"
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  That looks like a minor point, but I think it underscores Google's cultural problem. Google has had so many failures in the calendar/blog/assistant space because Google doesn't understand ordinary people. It's an elite company full of elite engineers running elite engineering projects (and a lot of search). It has no internal cultural reference point for average-IQ non-elite users. This is why Google has so bad at productising interesting ideas that Google didn't invent, and which have to deal with real competition. The software works, mostly. But users don't feel there's anything special or unique about the experience. You could argue - reasonably - this is all about perception management. Apple does well because it sells its products as stylish and magical. Even if the technological reality is mediocre, Apple has consistently managed to create a brand that is good at making technology seem humanised. Google has never understood why that kind of marketing is necessary. The technology is good, it should speak for itself. If customers don't get it - no one understands why. Now with AI, the pitch is out of key for the same reasons. Most people don't want something that anticipates their intentions, because that's just creepy. Even if it works well, it creates an experience of diminished control and empowerment. It's like someone saying "Trust me" when they're promising you something new, but they've never given you a reason to. Does the AI know you well enough to make the right decisions? Why would it? Unless Google can dramatise that it does, reliably, they're not going anywhere with this one, no matter how good the technology really is.

Adam_O 10y ago

That reminds me of an interview i saw a few months ago with one of their main guys: https://charlierose.com/videos/28249 https://charlierose.com/videos/28249

thowAway7890 10y ago

Viv still uses Nuance according to their last demo, viv seems to be just a developers platform. Even Siri does not use Nuance anymore. Samsung probably needs developers for their IoT products in order to compete. Pixel's new assistant will not be available on other android devices with nougat so make sense that Samsung will have to bundle their own into their devices.

singularity2001 10y ago
>> Siri does not use Nuance anymore evidence? It still sucks.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

falaki 10y ago

I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A consequence of that design is separating speech recognition from NLP, which makes it inherently more error-prone than Google Now.

isaiahg 10y ago
I imagine you'll be able to change AI much like keyboards. They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it.
- objclxt 10y ago
  > They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it. Except in order to have Google services and the Play store you need to agree to a license with Google, which can easily mandate you not replace their stock apps with your own (or rather, not default to your own, unless the user indicates otherwise). Now, you could ship a phone without Google Play Services, but that's very unusual in the west (less so in China et al).
jshevek 10y ago
I agree it is unlikely that it would be able to compete with Google Now. I see Samsung having more success putting this into their appliances.
- euyyn 10y ago
  And they have their smart watches too.
ge96 10y ago
I too like the movie 'Her'
10y ago

smegel 10y ago

John Gruber is going to love this one.

pat2man 10y ago
> Huge score for Samsung. Does anyone disagree that AI assistant technology is table stakes for the next decade?
geodel 10y ago
Indeed. He also loved the Galaxy Note 7 beating iPhone 7 with earlier launch.
- smegel 10y ago
  It was early all right.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

choicewords 10y ago

Make AI startup, get acquired, quit, repeat

itg 10y ago
As long as the founder(s) know what they're doing. I've seen way too many AI startups with founders who don't even have the most basic ML knowledge but are doing it because it's the trend.
- mastazi 10y ago
  Replace "ML knowledge" with "CS / SW Eng. knowledge" and I would say this has always existed in the start-up world. My personal opinion is that lack of basic technical knowledge is a major no-no unless at least one of the other co-founders is technical.
asimuvPR 10y ago
Why not?

Everhusk 10y ago

Was really hoping to play with the dynamic code generation part of their SDK, hopefully they still get around to launching it.

jjcm 10y ago

I'm amazed that the founders didn't have some sort of non-compete agreement here. Excited that it's a more extensible digital assistant though. I think the reason why I like Alexa the most out of the services right now is that it feels like the easiest to add new functionality too. Hopefully this will pave the way for more open ai assistants.

cstejerean 10y ago
California doesn't believe in non-competes. The state believes that competition is in the public interest and enforcing non-competes would be counter to that.
- Ph0X 10y ago
  But what about patents?
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Federal law.
- pesenti 10y ago
  That's not true. California enforces non-compete related to the sale of a company (section 16601 - http://law.onecle.com/california/business/16601.html http://law.onecle.com/california/business/16601.html).
falaki 10y ago
A lot of the Siri IP belonged to Stanford SRI and Siri was basically licensing it. So when Adam left Siri and started Viv, Apple couldn't do anything. Also note that, Viv rarely talked about any details of their technology. Probably they were slightly afraid. At the same time Apple didn't want to pick a fight with a small startup and damage it's reputation. It might change now that Samsung is the owner.

deagler 10y ago

This is going to be great, The worlds top firms are now in direct competition with each other. Microsoft(Cortana), Amazon(Echo), Apple(Siri), Google(Assistant/Now) and now Samsung with Viv. The possibilites are just endless, the space race netted us a lot of innovation and this should do the same. Competition leads to Innovation

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Endless? No. We will have as many incompatible proprietary offerings. That's all.
aswanson 10y ago
Competition is for losers. 10 years ago the battle was microsoft vs yahoo and whoever...and it turned out the ones to pay attention to were fb and twtr...etc. The big innovation, the one to dominate headlines in 10 years, is likely unknown, run by a few guys on a shoestring and barely on the radar right now.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  MS, Apple, and Google are very much still around. Twitter and Yahoo are up for sale. FB is the only innovator on your list that could be classed as a newcomer. And it's been around for more than a decade. I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed. ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power.
  - madamelic 10y ago
    >I doubt we'll see the big innovation from a garage now, because the cost of entry has become too high for shoestring operators to succeed. > ML training needs fast, expensive hardware. You can experiment with it on a 1080 graphics card, but for industrial applications you need a lot more speed and power. This isn't the 1990's. AWS exists. Not to mention how hot VC is for AI startups. Sure, we won't have 15-year olds making the next AI breakthrough but to say that AI is solely in the realm of "big business" is naive.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago

Unfortunately I think it's pretty obvious why they were acquired, so 99% skeptical of their future. They were probably acquired because: 1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here. 2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays). So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
 won't let another map be the default. It doesn't matter if you have google maps installed, if you click an address apples maps open.
- ovao 10y ago
  That depends on the application (and website) in which you're tapping the address. In some cases that will be Google Maps, if installed, in others you'll be presented with open-with options, in others still it will be Apple Maps.
  - curt15 10y ago
    Apps on iOS have to hardcode every other third-party handler that they want to work with besides Apple Maps. If an app presents you with open-with options for maps, that's because the developer took the trouble to add extra codepaths for Google Maps, HERE Maps, etc.
    - ovao 10y ago
      That's good clarification, thank you.

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago

It's very disappointing that Apple got stuck with Siri and does not really improve on what they have. I assume part of it has to do with the fact that they are very careful about customer data and a lot of what makes assistants useful is having as much data in the cloud as possible. Still. As an iOS user I'm very jealous of what exists on other platforms now.

IMcD23 10y ago
Siri has been getting better ever since its release. Have you used it in iOS 10? It now has 3rd party integration with Uber and Lyft, Venmo, and many other apps. Its reliability and usability have drastically improved since Siri 1.0 on the iPhone 4S.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  No integration with the apps i care about: spotify, google maps, gmail and many others.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    Isn't that on Spotify and Google to implement?
    - julien_c 10y ago
      You have a whitelist of possible domains though (Messaging and payments being the most common for now)
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  And yet, the simplest interactions always disappoint me. I said "Create an appointment with John Smith at 2PM tomorrow". John Smith being someone who isn't in my contacts. Siri presented me with a list of my contacts that she thought I might have meant. The option "None of these" was also presented. I chose that, thinking she would just create the appointment with John Smith in the title as plain text like I wanted, and she said "All right, I'll leave it off your calendar" and that was that.

shalstvedt 10y ago

Does anyone else have the feeling that the ecosystem lock-in inherent in all of these large primarily hardware-focused companies isn't necessarily the whole future? I can imagine things like airport kiosks, coffee machines, subway terminals, hotel front desks, and other everyday objects or conglomerations of objects that aren't part of the consumer market most of these companies target also having such an interface, and they may not want to give all of that to Google or Amazon for instance. Making that software seems like a necessity to me (the "operating system" of the future) and I'm not sure how it fits in with the current trajectory. Thoughts?

lallysingh 10y ago
The large vendors are using phone revenue to fund fundamental conversational AI research. Eventually it'll get commiditized. Either as discoverable microservices that your favorite conversational AI finds, or as tiny ones for each device. I'm not sure which one is really worse.

S_A_P 10y ago

I'm just curious how the founders were able to somehow negotiate a deal to sell Siri and then go right back into the same arena and create a "better" version. How would apple or any company allow those terms?!?

scarlac 10y ago
They didn't just sell to Apple and immediately quit. They stayed around for some years, which is a common contract condition. You can't practically require people to not innovate after they left a company.
webtechgal 10y ago
Non-compete agreements are signed in (many) deals but they would be for a fixed term (typically 1 to 3 years?) after which, the inventors/innovators would be free to carry on further.

thedangler 10y ago

I hope they integrate it with Smarthings. Maybe make the hub a device like Google home or Echo to integrate with all the devices.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

I wonder if this is part of a move by Samsung to move off of Android? In some ways that would be a shame - the only phones I have owned are Samsung Android phones, love them. Still, Samsung is large enough to build and maintain their own stack.

LukeB_UK 10y ago
They've been maintaining their own set of apps that mirror Google apps on Android for a long time.
- douche 10y ago
  They are hot garbage, too. It's really ridiculous, you get a new Samsung phone and it has the default google/android apps, a copycat set of Samsung apps, and often a third set of carrier-specific apps that are even more of a dumpster fire.

camillomiller 10y ago

Dag kittlaus & friends placed two successful AI exits in ten years. Just wow.

aerovistae 10y ago

For how much they hyped their product this is a pretty inconspicuous exit.

te_chris 10y ago

So the value in AI startups is basically the number of ML/AI scientists you have times X million/scientist these days (perhaps multiplied by some sort of factor that measures the promise of your usually-not-working product). Given this, wouldn't it make sense for AI/ML people to form a guild and/or union and capture this value themselves, rather than let smooth-talking founders take all the cash?

douche 10y ago

Crap, another piece of preinstalled bloatware I won't be able to remove from my next phone without rooting it.

jheriko 10y ago

if this one doesn't turn itself on when its in my pocket, and doesn't start phoning random people without any speech like noises happening, i can see this being slightly less of a gimmick than siri... :P kudos to these guys though, i never followed their story after apple took them on, and just assumed they would still be there. selling something then going back to doing the same thing, and doing it better... i find that admirable. also despite my opinion on siri being "doesn't even work, not even close" i do look forward to more and better developments in that direction. although a part of me wonders if we won't just be wiring ourselves directly into our devices by the time this sort of tech becomes truly useful. :)