“Holding down the "home" button on the new iPhone 4S, available in the U.S. starting on October 14, summons a "personal assistant" known as Siri that can understand commands given in English, French, or German. It responds in a conversational style in both text and synthesized speech.”
“Winarsky says Siri's speech-based interface is not its most impressive feature. "Recognizing speech has become a commodity. It is finding the intent in what you said and matching that with the Web services available that cost hundreds of millions in research." Winarsky and colleagues at SRI made their technology capable of handling ambiguity and variability in statements, enabling Siri to deal with casual commands so that users don't have to use carefully scripted phrasing, he says.”
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