“When Siri arrived on the iPhone 4S it seemed like a magic piece of software,” Mike Butcher reports for TechCrunch. “The future had arrived. But it wasn’t alone. True Knowledge, a British startup with a natural language search engine developed in university labs, had been working out what to do next.”
“They licensed Nuance’s voice recognition technology and created an app based on the True Knowledge engine, called Evi, which worked on any iPhone and Android,” Butcher reports. “That clever move looks like it paid off. TechCrunch understands from sources that the company has been sold to Amazon for $26 million.”
Butcher reports, “Will Amazon combine Evi with the voice recognition company they bought in January called Ivona? It’s hard to say. But smart observers might speculate that all these moves point towards Amazon developing a mobile handset/smartphone.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple’s Siri and WifiSlam: A perfect match – April 10, 2013
Siri: The ace up Apple’s sleeve – February 6, 2013
Apple hires Amazon A9 exec Stasior to run Siri unit – October 15, 2012
26 million? So, not too important then.
They should have done an Instagram, much simpler and (worth?) a lot more……about 40 times more.
According to Andy Rubin, the integration of a voice assistance on a phone is ridiculously stupid – and yet Android received the app as now has Amazon?
Yet another technology Apple needs to fight over for it’s innovation of the iPhone. Wake up Lucy… the competitors have done nothing but copy – and – Android is allowing them to easily do so.
Apple doesn’t own Siri. Apple licenses the right to use Siri. Siri is not only on the iPhone you know.
Siri, Inc., which was acquired by Apple on April 28, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software)
Seriously, Apple owns Siri. Okay.
Nuance is the dictation engine that provides the power.
http://www.dragonmobileapps.com
They back stabbed Apple. Yes, yet another Asian company f–king with Apple.
We got Foxconn, Samsung and Nuance playing dirty.
Posts like these makes all of us come off like we are idiots. Apple DID NOT create, innovate or otherwise develop Siri. Guess what they did? They did the same thing Amazon is doing and that is purchased the originating company. Apple will no doubt and frankly they already have evolved the Siri engine as will Amazon develop theirs further.
There are millions of extremely talented people on this earth and they don’t all work at Apple Inc.
WOW, guess who got up on the wrong side of the bed this am.
For your info, No , Tim Cook nor his executive staff, do NOT invent everything that Apple does. Correct. Totally stupid comment but correct.
Apple as a company is focused on creating insanely great products. PRODUCTS that include quality hardware, quality software, and very high integration efforts that make them all work seamless.
NO Apple did not invent aluminum… But they decided to use it in the iPhone. They did not invent Siri, but they did decide to buy the company and integrate it into the hardware, software and make it great.
And that is the point to those that Bitch against Apple. To you, I say you cannot see the forest for all them trees getting in the way. Its not free, its not fully adaptable, and its not anti-gravity or teleportation, so it must suck!!!
Sorry it hurts so much to be you! For the last time (this week at least) Apple is about creating a great user experience and making insanely great products that we love. PERIOD
And if you look at how easy an iPhone or iPod touch can send video to your computer or appletv with just a touch of the button, and (for the most part) all this just works, then Apple is doing its job.
PS, Most of the people here that use Apple items DO NOT GIVE APPLE a free pass. They just do not BITCH about items not being free, or protected or not having the latest plastic color. They articulate that Apple could improve this or that.
Thank you and have a great weekend.
en
“Natural language” is nothing new and is far from what Siri is. I wish these people would take the time to understand the difference.
Interpreting natural language is parsing trickery … HyperCard used a natural language parser for HyperTalk, its programming language, almost 25 years ago.
Siri is an Artificial Intelligence engine that can comprehend language within context and learn from it. This was born out of a DARPA project at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and is not trivial language parsing that Google, Samsung and everyone else with “Siri-like” features claim them to be.
Hopefully this technology will advance quickly with more and more players investing so much into it. Nothing like competition to push businesses to keep raising the bar.
Well you got some wishful thinking, but consumers honestly don’t know the true difference. Siri is completely different then the competition. They are selling folks a watered down cheap impostor of Siri.
So yet another reason the iPhone or iOS is better.
Siri can understand what you dictate and can fallow commands PLUS Siri also comprehends how you phrase things one day to the next. Meaning you don’t need to be a robot to talk to a robot.
Here is a YouTube link demoing Evi:
Looks good on the iPhone
Wait what? Acquires? Do they have any money ore there those money losing none margin tax cheating bastards?
Hello there,
I was thinking about adding a link back to your site since
both of our websites are based around the same subject.
Would you prefer I link to you using your website address:
http://macdailynews.com/2013/04/17/amazon-acquires-siri-like-evi-app-for-26-million-prelude-to-an-amazon-phone/ or
web site title: MacDailyNews. Please let me know!
Thanks