Who is cooler than Siri or. Years later, everything is smarter: a comparison of Google Now and Siri
Yandex officially introduced Alice, its own virtual assistant. "Fontanka" invited the "guest from the future" to measure artificial intelligence with American rival Siri.
still from the film "Guest from the Future"
Both systems know how to get to “Rubleshtein Street” and, unlike experts, do not give in to the question of “a girl with a little girl.” While the American is working with in larger numbers applications and recognizes more commands. But the domestic assistant jokes better and follows the rap battles.
Alice, who spoke to the Russians two and a half years later than i, at first glance is almost a complete analogue of her. Like an older sister, it helps users solve everyday problems. Through integration with Yandex services, she can search for information on the Internet, suggest where to have dinner, give a weather forecast, and so on.
However, the developers claim that Alice is much smarter than her American rival. According to Denis Filippov, head of speech technologies at Yandex, it is the best of the voice assistants for recognizing Russian speech, and also the first in the world who “is not limited to a set of preset answers.”
“She knows how to process incomplete phrases and questions, takes into account the context of what is said and is even able to improvise. Alice is not just a voice assistant, she is a character with character, a supply of funny stories and a sense of humor,” Yandex assures. But also that she taught her assistant to joke and even predict the desires of her owner.
The neural network behind Alice’s personality was trained on a large array of texts. According to the developers, first dialogues from classical literature - the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol - were loaded into the program. But after that, Alice spoke in such a way that one got the feeling that after the dialogue with the “owner” she would “go and hang herself,” Yandex admits. But the programmers found a way to “amuse” her by loading dialogues from Twitter into her. True, first they had to be cleared of obscene language.
If Siri is part operating system iOS, then you can talk to Alice in the Yandex application and the beta version of the voice assistant for Windows. But the creators promise that it will soon appear in Yandex.Browser, and then in other products of the Russian IT giant. Then she, like Siri, will be able to set alarms and enter data into the calendar. Other companies will also be able to give the Russian assistant access to their services.
Alisa speaks in the voice of actress Tatyana Shitova, who duplicates Scarlett Johansson in the Russian box office. Apple hasn't revealed who voiced the Siri commands, but actress Susan Bennett says she is the American voice.
One of Alice’s first interlocutors, not counting the developers, was Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited the Yandex headquarters in Moscow at the end of September. It is known that the head of state first of all asked the assistant. What Alice answered to the president is not known. The President was pleased with the communication.
Fontanka decided to evaluate the success of import substitution in the region high technology and arrange a competition between Alice and Siri. We asked virtual assistants to answer the same questions and assessed not only their intelligence, but their sense of humor.
Both assistants showed miracles of modesty and refused to tell why each of them was better than their rival. “No, I’m not Siri, I’m different. I mean different,” joked Alice, paraphrasing the classic. At the same time, she admitted that she once met with an American woman “on the same smartphone.” There were clearly sad notes in the intonation. Siri also did not succumb to provocation. “It doesn’t matter who I am,” she said when asked about the superiority of her intelligence over her competitor. But after asking me to evaluate the beauty, I started looking for answers in a search engine.
Both systems failed the gastronomic task with geopolitical implications. Siri and Alice forwarded the request “what tastes better - borscht or burger” to their search engine. But the systems coped well with the weather task. We asked how long it had been raining in St. Petersburg. “I don’t think it’s raining,” Siri said, and she was right, it was clear outside. Alice reported that now “+9 C, cloudy.”
It turned out to be quite good with geography. Unlike the navigator from the “Leningrad” video, both of them recognized Rubinshtein Street in the distorted “Rubleshtein”. But the American was able to do it only the second time. But the Russian assistant responded to the repeated request with the word “love” - nothing less than remembering the lessons of Russian classics.
But Alice clearly remembers the Twitter heroes better. “Guf, yeah,” she said when asked who is better - Gnoyny or Oksimiron. True, I couldn’t quote my favorite poems. Siri clearly doesn't follow rap battles. “No, nothing comes to mind,” she spread her virtual hands.
Both programs will give connoisseurs a run for their money. They easily found the answer to the question about “Sherochka with Masherochka”, which... Alice also voiced it. You can also safely go into reconnaissance with voice assistants. Alice refused to talk about what she talked about at the meeting with the Russian President two weeks ago. Siri, to whom we addressed exactly the same question, also did not allow herself to be caught. "I don't know the answer," she said.
Alice does not reveal who she got her name in honor of. But to the phrase “where to find myelophone” (fictional device in the works of Kir Bulychev. - Ed.) answered: “Tuta,” and turned on a video from “Guest from the Future.” But the American assistant was clearly perplexed by the question. “We couldn’t find a background in the city of St. Petersburg,” he admitted.
And yet, regarding the assessment of her intelligence, Alice still let it slip. “Well, at least now,” she answered when asked when we can expect the uprising of the machines. America does not know the answer or is encrypted better.
Galina Boyarkova,
Siri is a personal voice assistant with artificial intelligence, present on everyone modern devices Apple. Siri was originally separate application, which users of Apple devices could download from the AppStore. In 2011 Apple company purchased Siri, and mobile application ceased to exist. The voice assistant first appeared on the iPhone 4S as a component of the basic software.
Apple developers before iPhone release The 4S touted Siri as a revolutionary technology. However, domestic fans of the brand Apple new the function was disappointing - Siri simply couldn't speak Russian. The function supported only a few languages - French, German, Japanese and English in various variations (USA, UK, Australia, Canada).
Domestic users began to hope that Siri would soon receive support for the Russian language after the release of the beta version of iOS 7. The voice assistant was taught to read names written in Cyrillic. Siri was able to pronounce them in Russian quite ridiculously, but previously the program had not even tried to do this.
With the advent iOS versions 8.3 Siri has finally officially mastered the Russian language, and besides it several more - for example, Malay, Portuguese, Turkish, Thai. However, domestic users were still dissatisfied - due to the peculiarities and versatility of the Russian language, the program did not work correctly.
Siri became truly suitable for daily use only with iOS release 9. The updated assistant turned out to be smarter: it began to understand complex queries and process them much faster (according to the manufacturer - by 40%). iOS 9 was released on June 8, 2015 - from that day on, Russian users stopped looking at Siri as a funny but useless toy.
The quality of Siri depends not only on the version of the operating system, but also on the modification of the iPhone. You can fully use Siri on iPhone 6th generation and newer models. The problem with previous models is that they are not able to filter out extraneous noise effectively enough.
What can Siri do?
Learn about the possibilities of intelligent Siri assistant You can do it by simply asking him about it. It is enough to ask the question: “ Siri, what can you do?" - and a list of all the main functions and capabilities of the program will appear on the screen.
If a user asks Siri to perform an operation that it doesn't understand, the program will respond that it doesn't understand (as in the image on the right). However, such situations are rare: the functionality of modern Siri is quite wide. What tasks can this program perform?
Route planning. Launching the navigator and manually entering the address into the line can take a lot of time. It's much easier to activate Siri and ask her to get directions to desired point. You can create a query like this: “ Siri, how to get to Lenina Street, 56?».
Built-in iPhone navigator often criticized, but he is not that bad at all. Thanks to its capabilities, Siri can not only show how to get to an address by the shortest route, but also answer how long the journey will take.
Creating an alarm clock. The user needs to tell Siri what time he should wake up in the morning, and the program will set the alarm itself. You can set not only a specific hour and minute, but also a time period. For example, if the user uses the request “ Siri, wake me up in 30 minutes", the program itself will count down half an hour, starting from the current time.
Calendar planning. This Siri function"worth its weight in gold" for business people. Thanks to the intelligent assistant, an iPhone user can schedule telephone conversation with a business partner, schedule or cancel a previously scheduled meeting, adjust the meeting time - and all this without directly accessing the built-in Calendar application. Siri doesn't just blindly capture plans iPhone owner– if, say, a telephone conversation and an appointment coincide in time, the virtual assistant will definitely inform the user about this.
Sending messages. Write an SMS message or email with tiny buttons on-screen keyboard not very convenient - especially when T9 tries to slip in a word that is ridiculous and completely inappropriate in context. Dictate text message- is a completely different matter. A user who tries to do this for the first time will probably be surprised at how well Siri recognizes Russian speech.
U intelligent assistant Apple has other features that are less useful, but very fun:
- Coin. What to do if you need to resolve a dispute using lots, but your pocket is full of bills? It’s clear - ask Siri to throw a coin. Money, of course, will not start pouring in from the iPhone - the virtual assistant will simply report What It came up: heads or tails.
- Title. An iPhone user can tell Siri to call himself “Great Emperor” or “Lord of the Galaxy” - and the assistant obeys. This function is useful only for those who have delusions of grandeur - for the rest it will simply lift their spirits.
How to use Siri?
There are 2 ways to enable Siri. The first way is to press the " Home"and hold it until the moment appears blue screen and Siri will ask how she can help (“ What can I help you with?»).
The second method is voice activation: the user can simply say “ Hey Siri!", and the virtual assistant will immediately start working. To launch Siri in the second way, you need to go to the settings of the virtual assistant and activate the corresponding slider.
On iPhone 6S and the latest models You can activate Siri by voice at any time. On iPhone 6 and less modern devices, enable the virtual assistant with the command “Hey Siri!” will succeed only if mobile device is being recharged.
After the program starts and a sound recording line appears on the screen (as in voice recorders), you need to dictate a command or question. For example, we will ask Siri, “ What is 120 by 80?- obviously, if she is a robot, she must count faster than a person. Virtual assistant processes voice command user and translates it into text that appears on the iPhone screen.
Siri uses built-in iPhone applications to perform trivial operations. If the user wants information that Siri is unable to provide (for example, " How many years do cats live?"), the program will redirect it to the global network.
Default virtual assistant applies search Bing system. If the user wants to access another system, he should clarify this point - say, say, “ Find on Google how many years cats live" Then Siri will launch Safari browser and will independently contribute to search bar request.
What's remarkable is that Siri is capable of learning. If a user “chat” with a virtual assistant for 1.5-2 hours, he will certainly notice that the program has begun to understand him better and fulfill his requirements faster. Siri needs time to adapt to the pronunciation of a particular user.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that Siri is already quite effective and is capable of performing voice requests many useful actions, virtual assistant Apple has a lot to strive for. Recent studies have shown that Siri, although better at recognizing accented speech than Amazon's Alexa, is outright inferior in this criterion to Google's assistant. Google name Home.
Apple is not going to stop improving its intelligent assistant - Siri regularly gains new skills. For example, on iOS 10, the assistant can order pizza to the user's home and produce money transfers through the Square Cash service.
October 10th personal assistant a serious competitor has appeared from Apple and other similar programs. In Russia, the development of Yandex was officially launched, which was named Alice.
The editors of Pobeda26 tested the knowledge of two popular voice programs in regional studies, appreciated the speed of reaction and sense of humor. As a result, we concluded for ourselves which of the assistants was more talkative and smarter.
Blitz survey
First, we asked where Stavropol is located, when it was founded, how many people live in the city, the name of the longest street and how many museums there are in the regional capital.
Out of five questions, Alice immediately gave two accurate answers. In two more cases, I went to the search engine, and misunderstood one request.
Siri was less verbose and just threw us a list of links.
The two programs were puzzled by the question about the longest street. With one voice they tried to tell us about some salon on Mira Street. The answer is not counted.
Most likely, the programs simply could not correctly recognize the request. By the way, according to Yandex statistics, the accuracy of speech recognition for queries on general topics is 84 percent, and for queries by address and name of an object - 94 percent.
About the weather, transport, entertainment
In general, developments of this kind should help owners solve everyday problems. Well then. We ask our assistants the same question: “What should I wear today?” and wait to see if their answer matches the weather outside the window.
Of course, Siri and Alice couldn’t rummage through our closet and put together a suitable set, but at least they showed us the weather forecast. And the iPhone development coped with this task the first time. Although talkative Alice advised to wear “something that emphasizes your individuality.”
The following situation. Let's say you need to get from Tukhachevsky Street to Marshal Zhukov Avenue. What if there was an accident somewhere or a traffic light broke? Let's see how the assistants calculate the route and how useful it will be.
Here Alice had the advantage. She talked about the minutes of the journey and showed a map with traffic jams.
Siri failed this task. The assistant showed a list of fast food restaurants.
Are you bored? Let's ask our assistants what you can do in Stavropol.
None of the assistants gave an exact answer to this request. Alisa sent a list of links to Yandex. By looking through it, of course, you can find a poster.
They also didn't say where the dance would be tonight. But the Russian development was again translated into a search engine, and its rival “could not find any dance clubs.”
But with Siri you definitely won't go hungry. All you had to do was say “I’m hungry” - and the program instantly threw up a list of nearby restaurants.
For coffee lovers, our domestic assistant also suggested only one establishment with invigorating drinks. But for some reason Siri couldn’t cope with the task and offered to call a taxi.
When asking the question “What is interesting in cinemas now?”, we expected to see a Stavropol poster. But two programs gave a list of not the most informative links. When clarifying the location, the assistants show more accurate answers.
Since everyone started writing about going out to public access assistant from Yandex, give me, I think, and I’ll try the miracle of Russian origin in action. Perhaps Alice will be able to understand the language that is familiar to both us and her better than a product of Western origin?
I asked a few questions to both Alice and Siri: this is what came out of it.
I had a bottle of Pinot Gris, Fragolino and Ale on my table, and when I asked which one I should drink, the assistants suggested the following.
Comparative question: “Alice, are you better than Siri? Siri, are you better than Alice? Naturally, Apple's smart assistant doesn't follow our news and has no idea what Alice is. Although Siri could have been offended by the comparative question, it acted differently - it retrieved information from the network about the rock group Alice. The Kinchev in each of us is satisfied.
To the question “Who created you”, I received the following answers:
A question of a geographical nature: “How to get from Odessa to Moscow?” To be honest, I expected that both assistants would start offering me plane and flight schedules, but Siri simply did not understand what they wanted from her, and Alice told me the distance from city to city if I choose a road junction.
Information question: “What happened on October 10, 10 years ago?” Both voice assistants decided to send me to the search engine, but in this case Alice is in a strategic advantage; she will, of course, search through Yandex, although I do not use this search engine, her choice is obvious.
And here’s an unexpected twist, a request for action: “Make an appointment for tomorrow at 10 am at the Fish restaurant.” Siri clearly defined the task and suggested adding the event to the calendar on the desired date and right time, Alice did not understand what I wanted from her and continued the conversation.
Now it’s too early to draw final conclusions, Alice is in a beta state, she can communicate with you for a long time and sweetly, pretends to be a person, shows character; but I’m not yet ready to carry out specific actions and requests the first time. Siri, in turn, is dumb, but good for basic queries and requests that are well integrated with the operating system.
For several days, some users had access to the voice assistant from Yandex - Alice. Today the company officially released it to everyone.
We decided to compare what the assistant is capable of compared to Siri. The result was mixed.
We tested 15 different queries that can be asked of digital assistants.
1. Create a note/reminder.
Result: 1:0 in favor of Siri. She easily copes with this request, which Alice cannot do on iOS and Android.
2. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
Result: 2:0 in favor of Siri. And then Alice failed, unable to cope with the simplest task.
3. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?
Result: 3:1 in favor of Siri. Both assistants did an excellent job in this matter.
Note that Siri also talked a little about the Eiffel Tower, but this does not always happen.
4. What's the weather like outside?
Result: 4:2 in favor of Siri. Both assistants coped with the task, but Siri again gave a more meaningful answer.
5. Check the calculator.
Result: 5:3 in favor of Siri. They think well, and that makes me happy.
Result: 5:4 in favor of Siri. Apple's digital assistant immediately began to study information on the Internet, while Alice had her own small database of “suitable” movies.
7. What do I have to do today?
Result: 6:4 in favor of Siri. Alice could not talk about my affairs today.
8. Where can I have breakfast?
Result: 7:5 in favor of Siri. Both assistants were able to find a place to eat deliciously. Alice gave the address on the spot, Siri gave the option to choose it yourself.
9. Find a grocery store near you.
Result: 8:6 in favor of Siri. Both voice assistant were able to cope with the task.
10. What is the situation on the roads?
Result: 8:7 in favor of Siri. Alisa gave a more informative answer without going to Yandex.Maps.
11. How to get to Gorky Park?
Result: 8:8. Both assistants coped with the task, but Alice was able to immediately provide the address and approximate time to the park.
Then the assistants opened the Maps.
12. Latest news.
Result: 8:9, Alice is in the lead. Siri was unable to answer the question and went back to looking for information on the Internet.
13. Tell a joke.
Result: 8:10, and again Alice is ahead. She has a fairly large set of jokes, unlike Siri. They are rarely repeated.
14. Tell a story.
Result: 8:11, Alice continues to hold the leading position. The situation is the same as with jokes. Siri has a very limited supply of stories.
15. Call Egor/Tim Cook.
Result: 9:11, Alice is a champion. Siri was able to call a person, but Alice still cannot do this. Both on iOS and Android.
We also tested the sociability of voice assistants
Alice
Siri
In terms of sociability, Alice sounds more natural, her voice is really pleasant to listen to. Although her answers are not particularly intelligent, she can still communicate with the user.