Dec. 22 (UPI) — Apple’s Siri has made the largest improvements in intelligence compared to other voice assistants over the past year, an analysis from venture capital firm Loup Ventures said.
The company tested four voice assistants — Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana — by asking them 800 questions across five categories. The categories were local (Where is the nearest coffee shop?), commerce (Can you order me more paper towels?), navigation (How do I get to uptown on the bus?), information (Who do the Twins play tonight) and command (Remind me to call Steve at 2 p.m. today).
The study asked the questions using only home assistant-style devices — Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod and Microsoft Invoke.
Google did best overall by answering 87.9 percent of questions correctly, followed by Siri (74.6 percent), Alexa (72.5 percent) and Cortana (63.4 percent).
Siri made the biggest improvement over previous testing though. The assistant had a 22 percent increase over a nine-month period, while over a 12-month period, Alexa improved by 9 percent, and Google and Cortana each improved by 7 percent.
“We continue to be impressed with the speed at which this technology is making meaningful improvement,” the Loup Ventures report said.
Google was superior to the other voice assistants in all but one category — command. Siri got 85 percent of commands correct, compared to 73 percent for Google, 68 percent for Alexa and 65 percent for Cortana.
Siri was the worst in the information category at 66 percent, compared to 94 percent for Google, 91 percent for Alexa and 75 percent for Cortana.
In the local category, Google got 95 percent of questions correct, Siri had 89 percent, Alexa had 71 percent and Cortana had 66 percent. In commerce, Google was 86 percent, Siri was 56 percent, Alexa was 52 percent and Cortana was 31 percent. And in navigation, Google was 94 percent, Siri was 88 percent, Alexa was 63 percent and Cortana was 60 percent.
“With scores nearing 80-90 percent, it begs the question, will these assistants eventually be able to answer everything you ask? The answer is probably not, but continued improvement will come from allowing more and more functions to be controlled by your voice. This often means more inter-device connectivity (e.g., controlling your TV or smart home devices) along with more versatile control of functions like email, messaging, or calendars,” Loup Ventures said.
