Siri May Get a Whole Lot Smarter, Very Soon

Siri May Get a Whole Lot Smarter, Very Soon

Apple’s voice assistant Siri isn’t exactly known for accuracy, but the company is reportedly looking to make her much smarter. Apple is hiring a team of experts and researchers to ramp up Siri’s next-generation software, which is said to work with neural network algorithms. This will make it much easier for the service to learn and understand spoken language with human-like speed. Some tasks like face recognition and speech are more complicated for a computer to recognize than the human brain.

Apple’s move lets it catch up with some tech companies who have already experimented with the learning speech method. Android’s Google Now has tested neural nets, as has Microsoft, which will be using it to run its real-time translation feature for Skype that will launch later this year.

The fact that Apple is hiring high-level staffers for the team means it’s serious about growing its voice-recognition efforts. It’s unknown whether we will see a Siri reboot when iOS 8 officially launches in the fall.