Siri + AI = More Human?
Updated: Feb 14, 2021
Apple announced that Siri is getting a clearer, more human voice – in both male and female intonations. There will also be some new “skills” added to make Siri even smarter.
A key one is the ability to use Siri for voice translations. Of course, Siri is not the only kid on the block. There is great competition in this space amongst the industry’s major players, like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant among others.
In addition to the voice translation, advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) were added to Siri. According to Apple, Siri can “anticipate what you want and make suggestions before you even ask”. Siri will also use what “she” learns about you to link to your news feed, making it more appropriate for you. Finally, encryption is also a key part of this update, to ensure peace of mind for your data privacy.
You can ask Siri in English how to say something in Chinese, Spanish, French, German, or Italian, and Siri will translate the phrase. Undoubtedly, additional languages will be added in future updates. As with all things in the world of machine translation, do not expect perfection or even close to 100% accuracy. The gist is that there will be certain times and places when this voice translation will be useful, and of course some opportunity for fun when using it.
We will have even more reasons to ignore the people in our immediate vicinity and talk to our phones! “I mean, Siri really gets me, she knows me!” Okay so this is meant as a tongue-in-cheek view of how we adapt in todays connected and ever-evolving AI-injected world.
Here at Foreign translations, we ALWAYS prefer speaking to people, and better yet, translating, so people of the world are connected – regardless of their native language!