Dag Kittlaus took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to show off Viv, the intelligent assistant his company is building as a follow-on to Siri, which his team built and sold to Apple.
Watch the video below to see Viv in action. But in a nutshell, here are some queries that showcase Viv’s capabilities:
What’s the weather like at home today?
This first one is pretty simple and one that Siri handled just as well.
Was it raining in Seattle three Thursdays ago?
This is the first point of departure for Viv. While both Siri and Viv know how to do the date math (Siri knows three Thursdays ago was April 21st), Viv can go back in time for the weather, Siri cannot. Not that important, but keep reading.
Will it be warmer than 70° near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?
This is far more complex a query than Siri can handle. If you ask Siri, “Is it warmer than 70°?”, you’ll get the familiar, checking the web for “Is it warmer than 70°”. Viv parsed and responded correctly to this query.
Here’s another query:
Send Adam 20 bucks for the drinks last night
This query shows how Viv works with third party services. In this case, Venmo is used to send $20 to a friend, Adam. Presumably, Viv already had context that Dag had drinks with Adam last night and knew enough about Adam to send the money.
Another third party demo:
Send my mom some flowers for her birthday
Viv connects to Pro Flowers and shows some arrangements. Dag follows up with:
What about tulips?
Viv interacts with Pro Flowers and changes the offerings to show tulip arrangements. Dag makes the purchase and the flowers are on their way. Key to all this is Viv’s ability to save context, to remember what was discussed previously, make adjustments to the model of a current query, but also to tweak the model of a larger context, like a future meeting or a past event.
We’ve now gone well beyond Siri.
Get me a nice room in Palm Springs for labor day weekend.
Here Viv interacts with another third party, Hotels.com.
I need a ride for six people from my office to Madison Square Garden
This time it’s Uber. In this case, the request was for a vehicle big enough to seat six people.
Interestingly, Viv appeared to have been built on a Mac and was demoed running live on an iPhone. Dag got several phone calls during the demo, so Viv was running on a device, not a simulator.
Unlike Siri, Viv is wide open. There’s a Viv Developer Center where developers go to build new apps and teach Viv new things. One can imagine building a specialized Viv context for your environment.
To be clear, Siri is incredibly useful and steadily gains knowledge on the server side (Apple adds new data without having to update Siri on your phone). This is not a slam on Siri. Viv is next generation.
I suspect Apple has similar plans for the next generation of Siri. Hopefully, part of those plans will open up Siri to developers and allow for customization. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple addresses future Siri plans at WWDC.
This is all about AI. Viv is capable of learning/programming herself.
And this is Apple´s biggest weakness, control.. When in the future do you think Apple will allow an AI system to program itself without having 100% control over what is being done? That is giving away all control to a smarter AI, and trusting it will make the right choice. And Apple will never do that with its current DNA.
Hence, Siri is Apple and Viv is the future.
“I suspect Apple has similar plans for the next generation of Siri.”
I think we’ve seen all Siri will ever do. Heck, it did more before Apple bought it and stripped it down for inclusion in iOS 5.
“I suspect Apple has similar plans for the next generation of Siri. Hopefully, part of those plans will open up Siri to developers and allow for customisation. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple addresses future Siri plans at WWDC.”
This needed to happen, like, last year. They’ve really dropped the ball on this. Also, where is the universal search API for ATV we were promised?
It’s very discouraging–troubling, really–that the Viv team had to leave Apple in order to create this impressive tech.
As far as I know, they were never part of Apple. Apple bought Siri from them (Apple did not buy the company) and then they moved on to other work.
There is nothing to keep Apple from buying Viv, also, at which point Dag will move on to the next project.
Apple bought the whole Siri company, not just the app:
http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-buys-virtual-assistant-app-maker-siri/
Dag and other founders joined Apple and eventually left:
http://www.cnet.com/news/siri-co-founder-kittlaus-leaves-apple-report-says/
Apple could snap Viv up as well, but it would probably be tempted to trim Viv’s capabilities as it did Siri’s. That would make the deal less appealing to Dag & Cos., especially since there appear to be other suitors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/04/siris-creators-say-theyve-made-something-better-that-will-take-care-of-everything-for-you/
(Notice Apple is not said to be among them.)
Thanks for the links and info!
Also, I agree concerning Apple buying Viv. Viv is likely not to want to sell to anyone as they are attempting to be cross/open platform — at least until they have to. Apple would likely trim capabilities, too, but I think it’s just as likely that trimming is for the sake of security as well as due to Apple’s security model (i.e. it doesn’t keep your info out on the internet, and therefore doesn’t do searches and integration that same way Google or Microsoft can) than it is for any kind of nefarious or pseudo-nefarious reason.
Tim Cook has been hinting at 3rd party support in Siri for a while now.
there will be competition, and maybe a buyout. But I am sure all “intelligent” assistant will eventually perform about the same way.
So is this something actually in a product available for consumer use? Or is it just a really cool demo that the tech community is currently wetting itself over?
Glad to help–I agree with you about all of this. My concern is that Apple’s commitment to security will cause it to miss the boat on this new platform/functionality. I’m afraid they’ve already lost a step to Google on this front. In the past year or two, Android has become much more effective at anticipating and meeting the user’s need for information than iOS.
The latter.
Viv seems to have two advantages: 1) Improved AI that parses requests and figures out how to marshal third party data to provide meaningful responses, generating its own code on the fly; and 2) Unlimited integration with third parties.
If I understand Siri correctly, it seems to me that Apple is far behind in 1), but it’s got great engineers and surely can catch up; but it’s philosophical stance against sharing user data and its traditional fetish for control all but preclude 2).
I predict that at WWCD, Apple will present an incrementally improved Siri that is 1) a little smarter and 2) offers some limited 3-party APIs. Apple will present this as if it is a revolution that no one has thought of before.
But it will be available this fall, while Viv will not be.
While the technology is impressive from a technical standpoint, you left one important aspect of it out of your summary, Jim.
The technology is dependent on mass-scale user tracking and data collection by Viv and likely by their partner companies.
Notice that Kittlaus made no mention of how that data would be protected or how it would be used. He made no mention of how his company is going to profit from the success of this technology.
But we exactly how he will do it: by monetizing the personal information collected. Viv wants to be the next Facebook. The next Google. In other words, their business plan is the morally despicable one that has turned the internet into a corporate surveillance cesspool.
My guess is one of the main reasons he quit Apple after the acquisition was Apple’s unwillingness to pursue the surveillance advertising that has ruined the internet.
Send Adam 20 bucks for the drinks last night
I’d like to see the results of this if 1) There’s several Adams in the phone’s contact list, 2) None were on a calendar invite for the drinks the night before (because aside from birthdays, etc who calendars their friends to go get a beer?), 3) I had zero payment options setup or 3a) more than 1.
Look, this is impressive, but it’s reliant on Viv knowing who Adam is (easy if there’s only 1) and being able to integrate with, in this case, Venmo. The ‘For drinks last night” is fluff that doesn’t need to be acted on or understood.
Apple needs to create APIs for Siri and it could do this. I can already tell it to call a person – if there were APIs for Venmo, Square Cash, etc There’s little reason she couldn’t do this.
I didn’t see anything game changing in Viv. It was all pretty basic and many of the examples had to rely on very small data sets to work as they did (since many of those examples would be ambiguous in most real-world situations). I find it difficult to extrapolate any of the demoed features into to real-world use cases that would be significant improvements over what is possible with current generation systems.
I find the mental model needed to keep up with verbal interfaces like this to be far more taxing than more traditional interface alternatives. I also find the verbal interfaces to be slower than traditional alternatives in many cases. Clearly there are use-cases where verbal interfaces are really significant improvements, dictation of messages and the AppleTV remote for instance, but I find it hard to accept that these systems will be ubiquitous.
too bad Pro Flowers will completely screw you on shipping & handling. far better off calling a florist local to your recipient.
I’m sorry you fell for the “self-programming” bit. I’m a software dev and I’m dubious…people have been claiming this crap for decades.
this is a tech demo on a stage. not a real product. get back to us when its a real product. that you can, you know, use.
Agreed. I tell everyone not to use the nationals. Even if you don’t live in your mom’s (for example) town, it’s always better to call up the local florist and have them deliver.
Siri will always lose, as long as Apple’s privacy mandates remain so strict – the recall of context and previous queries are not possible in the walled garden.
yup. on a lark i tried using it for mother’s day — the shipping, plus holiday fee, plus saturday fee, plus handling, came to $29 alone — almost as much as the $39 arrangement. pffft. no. returned to the local florist who was a joy to work with on the phone.
So the claim is Viv = Siri + Wolfram Alpha?
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Samsung bought Viv.
🙂