Apple Purchases Voice Search App Siri
April 29th, 2010
Siri is a voice controlled personal assistant app for the iPhone. It uses a voice recognition system to recognize spoken requests, such as finding local entertainment, calling a cab, booking a movie ticket, or reserving a seat at a restaurant. WSJ is reporting that Apple has picked the company up for an undisclosed sum, according to an investor in the company. “The offer from Apple was of a scope and tenor that it was a no-brainer to accept it,” said Shawn Carolan, a managing director at Menlo Ventures and a board member at Siri.
Siri has only been available in the app store since February, and its advanced speech recognition capabilities and artificial intelligence are based on technology partly funded by the Stanford Research Institute and DARPA.
Does this mean that voice activated functionality is coming to the iPhone? I wouldn’t guess any time in the near future. Apple has a tendency to sit on these purchases for a significant amount of time. After all, we’re still waiting to see what they do with the Lala purchase.
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