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Huawei might try to take its voice assistant outside of China
Smartphone maker Huawei is planning on taking its popular voice assistant outside of China and competing with Amazon, Google and Apple internationally, according to a report from CNBC. The Chinese technology firm is apparently working on a version of its voice assistant Xiaoyi that will work outside of China, though it hasn't revealed what languages the AI will speak, nor when it will be available for other markets.
Apple's Shortcuts app lets Siri do everything
It's no secret that Apple's virtual assistant, Siri, doesn't have the best reputation -- especially when you compare it to Google's incredibly smart counterpart. But, the company has been working hard recently to make Siri more useful for those of you with an iOS or Mac device. And today, Apple announced that Siri is getting smarter thanks to a new app called Shortcuts, which will let you build your own commands with any application. With the Tile app, for example, you can say "Hey Siri, I lost my keys," and that will then alert the tiny gadget attached to your keys.
Siri's 'proactive' overhaul makes it Apple's answer to Google Now
No, it's not the Rodan + Fields, Katy Perry-backed acne solution. At today's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, revealed a new "proactive" Siri, one with an overhauled UI and a feature set on iOS 9 that makes it Apple's take on preemptive search. With this new Siri, users can expect both a 40 percent reduction in word error rates for spoken commands and faster research results. It'll also surface user photos from their libraries with a simple voice command and even set "intelligent" reminders based on context-specific actions.
Google Now gets an epic 47-question interrogation, survives for now (video)
You've seen us give Google Now a shakedown in our Jelly Bean review, but one JLishere decided to give the voice command system an unusually thorough grilling. The 47-question test goes beyond what Google showed onstage at I/O and shows that, in some cases, Android's new rival to Siri can cover a wide range of answers, whether it's day-to-day queries like directions and image searches to more esoteric trivia, like the minimum height for riding Disney World's Space Mountain. There's even a special treat for those who dare to bring up Google's best-known Easter egg. That said, we wouldn't be too eager to kick earlier voice command systems to the curb: we've tried a few close variants on the questions and sometimes managed to stump Google Now, so it's clear Google could stand to layer on some more polish. JLishere's original video evidence is available after the break.
