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European mobile carriers team up to build new Siri competitor ‘Djingo’

While even the original Siri creators have unveiled their own competitor to the built-in iOS virtual assistant, another new player will soon enter the market. As detailed in a report from Bloomberg, European mobile networks Orange SA and Deutsche Telekom are building an artificial intelligence platform…

The new assistant is called Djingo and responds to both voice and text. It was first unveiled by Orange CEO Stephane Richard earlier today. Richard demonstrated Djingo in the form of a donut-shaped speaker and showed it playing music and publishing a tweet.

“Djingo is an erudite,” Richard said. “We put all our arithmetic and artificial intelligence know-how into it.”

Djingo will also be integrated into various devices such as a standalone speaker and microphone-equipped TV remotes.

In terms of how Djingo will be released, Richard says it will be made available via an application for smartphone users. Additionally, the two companies are working on a competitor to Amazon’s Dash button. This accessory is said to be capable of up to four actions, including ordering products online and sending text messages.

Users can interact with the AI –using the command “OK Djingo”– by talking into the speaker, into a microphone-equipped TV remote control similar to Amazon Fire, or typing into an app on a phone.

Last year, the original creators of Siri officially unveiled a new virtual assistant, Viv. The assistant worked by integrating various applications and allowing users to use their voice to perform functions with those applications. Just a few months after the unveiling of Viv, however, it was acquired by Samsung for an unknown price.

As for just how advanced this new Djingo virtual assistant from Orange SA and Deutsche Telekom AG will be, we’ll have to wait and see. Apple is reportedly planning a handful of Siri improvements with the release of iOS 11 later this year, which will help it compete from new offerings such as Djingo and Amazon’s Alexa platform.


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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com

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