Not To Be Outdone By Google And Amazon, Apple Acquires AI Startup For Siri

JAKARTA - Apple has reportedly acquired a start-up company Inductiv Inc which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to correct data. The results of this acquisition are expected to improve Siri's machine learning capabilities.

Compiled from Bloomberg, Friday, May 29, from the pattern, it looks like Apple is trying to improve Siri's performance. While there has been no further response from the Cupertino giants, Apple is suspected of buying smaller tech companies from time to time and they have not discussed their goals or plans.

Inductiv Inc is a Canadian startup, which Apple acquired recently, following the purchase of the popular weather app DarkSky and virtual reality entertainment platform NextVR. Long before that, Apple had also purchased Xnor.ai, which specializes in low-power AI tools. This was followed by the acquisition of Voysis in April, a company with technology to more accurately understand natural language.

It is known, Apple has made various kinds of innovations to improve Siri's performance in recent years, because the voice assistant has been of many benefits to its users.

Apple even hired former AI leader at Google, John Giannandrea to improve Siri. Apple began to provide additional AI support in its products. One of them is Deep Fusion found on the iPhone 11 Series.

However, Siri is considered largely lagging behind the voice assistants that Amazon and Google have. Because, Amazon and Google assistants are claimed to be superior in general knowledge compared to Siri, and are more compatible with a very wide range of third-party services. Whereas, Apple's iOS 13 software for iPhone, which was launched last September, has brought some improvements to Siri.

These improvements include more natural-sounding voices, more intelligence for offering suggestions in apps like Safari and Podcasts, and the ability to suggest that users create reminders based on conversations on the Messages service.

The update shows that Siri has become more than just a voice-activated assistant, but that this layer of AI that lives in Apple's software serves as a thread between many of its products, from iPhone to Mac and Apple Watch.