Last week we reported that Siri’s creators would be unveiling a new voice assistant called Viv this week. For those who missed our story last week, Viv is developed by the creators of Siri who no longer work at Apple. One of the upsides to Viv is the ability to integrate itself into third-party apps, something that Siri is sorely lacking at the moment.
Now if you’re curious as to how Viv will function, wonder no more because its creators have taken to stage at TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY to demonstrate the voice assistant in action. So far from what we can tell, Viv appears to be extremely capable. While voice assistants like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana can handle straightforward queries, Viv takes things to the next level.
For example Siri’s creator Dag Kittlaus asked Viv, “Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden gate bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?” Turns out that Viv had no problems answering the question and was able to return the query in a pretty short time. Of course we should point out that this was done in a controlled environment and how it fares in the real world is a different story.
After all when Siri was first demoed, it was pretty impressive too but when it was actually launched, it was more trouble than it was worth and was sued over false advertising. In any case no word on when Viv will launch or in what form it will launch (whether as a dedicated app or a platform that developers can build into their app), but we’ll keep our eyes peeled. In the meantime you can check out the video below to see it in action.