6 ms·

Yeah, they don't want to give users too much control; Siri is an important brand by itself and Apple doesn't want people going around skipping it.

draw_down 9y ago
Shhhhhh
woolvalley 9y ago
It's too bad, because I sure wish I could make the homepod use a different phrase. The homepod knows to activate when I say hey siri, but my friends phone activates instead of the homepod whenever they say 'hey siri' about %50 of the time.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Raphmedia 9y ago
At least Siri is easy to say internationally. I never manage to use the proper accent when I say "Okay Google".
saagarjha 9y ago
The non-cynical viewpoint would be that "Hey Siri" is an easy phrase to detect because of how it's said, which isn't really that similar to many other phrases.
- gok 9y ago
  “Hey Siri” actually a pretty challenging trigger phrase. It’s short (few phonemes), and it’s phonetically confuseable with phrases like “Hey Serial is out” (could be “Hey Siri all is out”).
sib 9y ago
Yes. In this case, the selection of a wake word ("Alexa") or phrase ("Hey Siri" or "OK Google") is driven primarily by performance (i.e., reduction of false accepts & false rejects). The folks designing these products know that, even though customers say that they'd like to customize the wake word or phrase, if the actual performance is significantly worse, those customers will not be happy. We experimented with this extensively.
- lancewiggs 9y ago
  But it's infuriating when you don't want to use the phrase and/or want to have a secret phrase. Better would be to allow customers to choose their own phrase and give immediate feedback, during setup, on how good it's likely to be.
  - sib 9y ago
    There's such a difference, and it's so hard to find really high-performing ones, that you would be constantly telling customers, "that won't work well"... We considered literally thousands of potential words. We also really didn't want anything like "hey" or "ok" to be required. Note how long it took for "Computer" to be available - and you can imagine how many of us wanted that. I think it gives an idea of the difficulty.
- gervase 9y ago
  If you can share, what kind of variation in F1 score were you seeing between different trigger words? I'd expect even within a single product family (i.e. Alexa/Echo/Amazon/Computer) there's probably significant variation. I'd also be interested in the differences between a collectively-optimized wake word (without personal training) and one which the user personally trains against their voice à la the parent article. To what extent does that personal training supplement/supplant (or fail to do so) the "good enough for everyone" wake word kernels?
  - sib 9y ago
    Nothing I can share, unfortunately.

draw_down 9y ago

Shhhhhh

woolvalley 9y ago

It's too bad, because I sure wish I could make the homepod use a different phrase. The homepod knows to activate when I say hey siri, but my friends phone activates instead of the homepod whenever they say 'hey siri' about %50 of the time.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Raphmedia 9y ago

At least Siri is easy to say internationally. I never manage to use the proper accent when I say "Okay Google".

saagarjha 9y ago

The non-cynical viewpoint would be that "Hey Siri" is an easy phrase to detect because of how it's said, which isn't really that similar to many other phrases.

gok 9y ago
“Hey Siri” actually a pretty challenging trigger phrase. It’s short (few phonemes), and it’s phonetically confuseable with phrases like “Hey Serial is out” (could be “Hey Siri all is out”).

sib 9y ago

Yes. In this case, the selection of a wake word ("Alexa") or phrase ("Hey Siri" or "OK Google") is driven primarily by performance (i.e., reduction of false accepts & false rejects). The folks designing these products know that, even though customers say that they'd like to customize the wake word or phrase, if the actual performance is significantly worse, those customers will not be happy. We experimented with this extensively.

lancewiggs 9y ago
But it's infuriating when you don't want to use the phrase and/or want to have a secret phrase. Better would be to allow customers to choose their own phrase and give immediate feedback, during setup, on how good it's likely to be.
- sib 9y ago
  There's such a difference, and it's so hard to find really high-performing ones, that you would be constantly telling customers, "that won't work well"... We considered literally thousands of potential words. We also really didn't want anything like "hey" or "ok" to be required. Note how long it took for "Computer" to be available - and you can imagine how many of us wanted that. I think it gives an idea of the difficulty.
gervase 9y ago
If you can share, what kind of variation in F1 score were you seeing between different trigger words? I'd expect even within a single product family (i.e. Alexa/Echo/Amazon/Computer) there's probably significant variation. I'd also be interested in the differences between a collectively-optimized wake word (without personal training) and one which the user personally trains against their voice à la the parent article. To what extent does that personal training supplement/supplant (or fail to do so) the "good enough for everyone" wake word kernels?
- sib 9y ago
  Nothing I can share, unfortunately.