Viv creator Dag Kittlaus speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt (image from YouTube video)
Apple's Siri is great, as is Google Now, Amazon Alexa and other voice activated personal assistants. But a new artificial intelligence engine, called Viv, shows promise for being a lot smarter than its predecessors.
Open platform
Viv comes from folks that created Siri and sold it to Apple. But, unlike Siri, Viv will be an open platform, which means it can be programmed to work with just about any app or service. For the most part, Siri only works with Apple's own apps, though there has been talk of a Siri API to open up to other iOS developers. But, Viv won't be limited to a single platform. It could run on other phone operating systems or be integrated into other devices such as entertainment system, home appliances, or perhaps even cars. The company says that it's talking with major tech companies to put Viv on many types of devices.
At TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Monday, Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus unveiled the new platform, which he referred to as a "true paradigm shift." He said that users want "one assistant" and don't want to have to think about which to access. He said people also "want their assistants to be personalized to you. You want your system to learn from you, to know your preferences," so, for example, it would find you a restaurant based on your food preferences. He said that Viv would be able to do hundreds of thousands of different things. Scroll to the end of this post to view his entire presentation.
It's built so that developers can create experiences "in a short period of time," said Kittlaus, including the ability to create complex experiences. He demonstrated several sample queries starting with "what's the weather like at home today" which caused Weather Underground to display weather in his home town. But it can get a lot more complex such as "will it be warmer than 70 degrees near the Golden Gate bridge after 5 PM the day after tomorrow." Viv was able to answer that question because, behind the scene, it is able to write dynamic code within 10 milliseconds find the answer to a query and generate the dialog necessary to answer the question.
Developer friendly
The key to Viv is its support for developers to create their own apps. In addition to Weather Underground, Kittlaus showed off examples from Venmo so he could say "Send Adam twenty bucks for the drinks I had last night" or "send my mom some flowers for her birthday," thanks to an app from ProFlowers." The command "Get me a nice room in Palm Springs for Labor Day weekend" will yield a reservation through Hotels.com.
The product is scheduled for a "rolling launch" towards the end of the year, said Kittlaus.
Next generation
As someone who prefers Google Maps to Apple Maps, I've always been frustrated by Siri's refusal to work with non-Apple apps on iOS devices. Google Now is a little more versatile but even if has its limitations. I like the fact that Amazon Alexa can learn skills from other developers (it can, for example, control my Vivint home automation service) but Viv will take this even further with more customization and the ability to parse more complex queries.
You can watch Kittlaus's presentation below
