A Brit taking on Apple’s Siri with ‘Evi’ (Wired UK)

Evi vs. Siri speech recognition comparison 

This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired’s articles in print before they’re posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

The quest to beat the Turing Test, which tests a machine’s ability to engage in intelligent conversation with a human, took a step forward in January with the launch of Evi. Developed by Cambridge-based company True Knowledge, Evi has gone head-to-head with Apple’s Siri and Google’s voice-search app. But Evi — available for iPhone (all models) and Android - claims a better understanding of real English and returns results in the same conversational style. Ask it a question (by speaking or typing) and it aims to give a real answer, rather than a list of links (Google) or the suggestion that you use the web (Siri).

The app uses the same Nuance voice-recognition technology as Siri, but relies on a far wider knowledge base. “The platform draws on a vast store of ideas, lexical uses and common sense that lets it understand a plain-English question much more accurately,” says William Tunstall-Pedoe, 43, True Knowledge’s CEO (above). Using the phone’s location capability, you can ask Evi “Where is the nearest petrol station?” and get an actual address.

Tunstall-Pedoe is something of an artificial-intelligence prodigy; he has been making and selling software since he was 13, such as Crossword Maestro.

Evi was almost victim of its own success — more than 250,000 downloads in its first week meant early users found its servers often unresponsive, before more server space eased the congestion. Extra features are on the way, including Siri-like command functions for Android. Tunstall-Pedoe is positioning Evi as a multipurpose platform. “A personal-assistant product is a framework in which you can do almost anything,” he says. “Evi is the final app.”

via http://www.speechtechnologygroup.com/speech-blog - Evi vs. Siri speech recognition comparison  This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired’s articles in print before they’re posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online . The quest to beat the Turing Test , wh ...