Microsoft and Harman Kardon on Monday officially revealed the Invoke, a device that will take on the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple's rumored Siri-based device in the smartspeaker market.
Amidst rumors of a Siri home speaker, Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller in an interview published this week offered his thoughts on dedicated voice assistants like Amazon's Echo, saying the lack of an onboard screen is a hindrance in many situations.
As rumors continue to heat up regarding a Siri-driven personal home assistant with high-end audio, Amazon is preparing to expand its own Alexa lineup, with a new leak revealing a touchscreen flagship Echo with camera.
Long-time Apple supplier Inventec has been selected by Apple to churn out Apple's rumored Siri speaker, if supply chain reports out of China are to be believed.
Apple's anticipated personal assistant accessory is expected to be a powerful and capable device, boasting "excellent" acoustics and computing power similar to recent iPhone models, positioning it for the high-end market with pricing higher than Amazon's Echo. And there's apparently a good chance it could be announced next month.
More details on Apple's anticipated standalone Siri speaker have emerged, suggesting the device could look similar in some ways to the company's cylindrical Mac Pro desktop, and could be released as soon as WWDC in June.
Apple is said to be "currently finalizing" designs for its long-rumored Amazon Echo competitor, featuring support for Siri and AirPlay and boasting Beats technology, a well-known leak source claimed on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Amazon expanded its Alexa family of devices with the Echo Look — a voice recognition device with a camera tailored to snapping a shot of your outfit, rating it, and giving you alternate choices in conjunction with an iOS app.
Speaking at the TED conference, Siri co-founder and Apple AI expert Tom Gruber declared that artificial intelligence should be used less to replace humans, and more to enhance aspects of humanity that are unreliable or fail with time, like memory.
The attitude displayed by Apple's Siri assistant can really be attributed to programmers, not voice work, according to the actress responsible for Siri's U.S. female voice, Susan Bennett.
Amazon's core hardware and software technologies that it uses in its Alexa voice recognition products are available for use for free by hardware manufacturers — but not to everyone.
Smarthome vendor Koogeek has updated its line of HomeKit products, and has released the Smart Socket — a device that plugs into any Edison-style lightbulb receptacle turning it into a Siri-controllable light.
Apple is planning a slate of Siri updates for "iOS 11" which should include things like more adaptive AI and integration with iMessage and iCloud, according to a rumor stemming from an Israeli site.
A four-year-old boy in the United Kingdom saved his mother's life after she collapsed, the Metropolitan Police has confirmed, by unlocking his mother's iPhone and asking Siri to contact the emergency services.
Marriott is currently testing both Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa at an Aloft hotel in Boston to gauge which assistant, if either, might be best for letting guests control their rooms through voice commands, a report said on Wednesday.
Amazon on Thursday began updating its official app for iOS to bring support for Alexa, its voice-driven personal assistant, officially to the iPhone, allowing users to ask questions, shop, play music and more.
A report on Thursday offered a behind-the-scenes look at how Apple introduces new languages for Siri, suggesting that broader language support is one of the few things keeping the voice assistant competitive in the face of rivals from Amazon and Google.
Customers of the Royal Bank of Canada can now perform money transfers with Siri, with an update to the bank's mobile app for iOS adding the ability to make payments from their checking accounts to individuals and companies using a verbal command.
While there appears to be no breach of Apple's security, the company terminated its relationship with hardware vendor SuperMicro because of concerns about firmware update security, and an update that potentially compromised a Siri server bank, plus the App Store's search server development environment. [Updated]
Apple is no longer keeping its Siri research and development office in Cambridge, U.K. a secret, revealing the facility's existence by constructing a sign bearing the company logo beside the building's front door.
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Roger Fingas
Mikey Campbell
Neil Hughes
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