Here’s how Siri might get to your desktop

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Siri
Siri usage is climbing rapidly.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Talking to your iPhone is commonplace these days, but getting Siri on your MacBook or iMac might seem like something out of a near-future like the one shown in Her by Spike Jones.

Siri on the desktop might not be as far out as it seems, though, if a new partnership between speech recognition company Sensory and Intel works out.

Intel hopes to add speech recognition features to its system-on-chips (SoC), letting any company get Siri-like powers using Intel’s Skylake, Anniedale, Broxton, Broadwell and Merrifield SoCs. Called TrulyHandsfree, the Sensory technology will ship directly from Intel.

The technology also has a low-power sound detection feature that will let you call out to it much like you can now with “Okay Google” or “Hey Siri.” Sensory also promises that its TrulyHandsfree tech will be accurate even when there’s background noise.

While there’s been some buzz about Siri coming to Mac desktops in the next big OS X release, OS X 11, or Fuji, this is the first time we’ve seen anything concrete about how that might work. It will be interesting to see if this specific partnership yields anything for Apple’s Siri system, or if it will just bring voice-recognition tech to other Intel hardware.

Whatever the final case, it would be great to get my Mac to search YouTube for me using only my voice, at least.

Source: The Next Web

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