How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by oarsinsync on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @08:36PM (#16589612)

Cant speak for the other person, but as someone who's used iPhones exclusively since the original, Siri makes mistakes with sufficient frequency that it's subjectively just bad. I can't quantify what percentage of requests fail to be understood correctly, but it's sufficiently high that the frequency is annoying. It's even worse when using the Apple Watch (Series 3).

Unexpectedly, this can sometimes be a positive too. "Hey siri, turn my lights <pink/orange/purple/blue/red/white>" has on multiple occasions been interpreted as "Hey siri, turn my lights", which then results in the lights being turned off. This is hugely entertaining when you're demonstrating your new Philips Hue bulbs over FaceTime, and the person on the other end now just sees your camera go black instead.

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by Reason077 on Thursday March 15, 2018 @05:43AM (#16591448)

I often want to set a timer for exactly 50 minutes so I know when my laundry is done.

But siri always interprets "Fifty" as "Fifteen". Pretty much every single time, it always makes the same mistake, no matter how clearly or slowly I try to pronounce it. I have to say "Hey Siri, set a timer for five zero minutes" to get it to pick it up accurately.

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by bjork on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:39AM (#16592707)

I also have that problem, but I say 51 minutes instead.

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by nagVenkat on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:47AM (#16592776)

Do you have any accent? By that I mean are you a second language English speaker? I just presumed that it couldn’t understand my accent heavy speeech.

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by Reason077 on Thursday March 15, 2018 @01:25PM (#16594797)

I'm a native English speaker, though whether I have an accent depends on your perspective! I can do either American or British somewhat convincingly, and I usually don't have any trouble being understood by Siri.

I suspect the problem with "50" is that whatever ML underpins it is heavily tuned/biased towards "15" because a lot of people probably set 15 minute timers all the time. 50 minute timers are much less common, I suspect?

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by oarsinsync on Thursday March 15, 2018 @10:16AM (#16593016)

Americans think I sound British. British think I sound American. Siri fails less often when set to British instead of American for me, but still fails too often regardless.

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by ghettoimp on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:19AM (#16592535)

Maybe saying 49 or 51 would work...

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Re:How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and A... by Reason077 on Thursday March 15, 2018 @01:19PM (#16594731)

It certainly does work, and I did that until I discovered the "Five zero" trick. It's just "Fifty" that it has a problem with!

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