14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s Siri is one of the top competitors in a market many smartphone makers are preparing to enter. When Google launched Google Assistant, it became clear that most flagship smartphones would come with AI virtual assistants soon.
Siri is the oldest virtual assistant out there and it offers a broad language support localized for 36 countries. While Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana speak only a few languages, Apple’s Siri is fluent in 21. With this feature, Apple makes sure that a large number of iPhone owners get full access to all of the phone’s tools, considering that a big chunk of sales are recorded outside the US.
More specifically, Cortana speaks eight languages, Google Assistant is fluent in four, while Alexa only speaks English or German. Siri is preparing to learn Shanghainese, a special dialect spoken only around Shanghai.
The process of teaching Siri a new language involves many stages
Apple’s speech team head Alex Acero explained to Reuters the techniques that the company uses in order to teach Siri various languages. Apple first requires people to read passages in a multitude of accents and dialects. The passages are then manually transcribed so that computers would know what they’re learning. Afterward, they’re supplemented by sounds captured in multiple voices and used for building language model to predict word sequences.
Apple rolls out dictation, before upgrading Siri. However, Apple is said to collect and anonymize a small part of customer recordings, then transcribe them so that the number of recognition errors would be reduced.
After it gathers enough data, the company can start hiring one or more actors to record voices. The first release of a new language for Siri only includes frequent questions, while the tech giant continues to update the code with adjustments every two weeks.
Apple’s Siri will soon experience increased competition in this market, as Huawei already started working on a voice assistant of its own. Samsung is Apple’s main competitor in the smartphone market and the company will introduce Bixby virtual AI with the Galaxy S8 on March 29.