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Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

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Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#11

Post by jshevek »

falaki wrote: post #2

I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A conseq…

I agree it is unlikely that it would be able to compete with Google Now. I see Samsung having more success putting this into their appliances.

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#12

Post by ge96 »

falaki wrote: post #2

I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A conseq…

I too like the movie 'Her'

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#14

Post by deagler »

This is going to be great, The worlds top firms are now in direct competition with each other.

Microsoft(Cortana), Amazon(Echo), Apple(Siri), Google(Assistant/Now) and now Samsung with Viv. The possibilites are just endless, the space race netted us a lot of innovation and this should do the same. Competition leads to Innovation

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#15

Post by objclxt »

isaiahg wrote: post #7
falaki wrote: post #2

I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A conseq…

I imagine you'll be able to change AI much like keyboards. They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it.

> They'll have theirs default and most people won't bother changing it.

Except in order to have Google services and the Play store you need to agree to a license with Google, which can easily mandate you not replace their stock apps with your own (or rather, not default to your own, unless the user indicates otherwise).

Now, you could ship a phone without Google Play Services, but that's very unusual in the west (less so in China et al).

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#16

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

Unfortunately I think it's pretty obvious why they were acquired, so 99% skeptical of their future. They were probably acquired because:

1. They realized just owning the software platform is very limiting (For example they can't compete with Apple no matter how good they are. Just look at Google maps. Thousand times better than the default Apple maps but will never be #1 map app on iOS because people always choose the default). Also, now even Google is moving towards owning their own hardware platform. As a VC funded company I think this is the best timing to exit. Otherwise it's all downhill from here.

2. Samsung wants to fight with Google/Apple/Amazon/MS and needed a weapon (because, you know, people say AI is the future nowadays).

So at best these guys will be integrated into Samsung phones to differentiate Samsung's hardware. I don't see them becoming the "open platform" that they envisioned at all.

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#17

Post by DominikR »

falaki wrote: post #2

I wonder if Samsung would ever put this on their Android Phones. I am confident it will not be able to compete with Google Now on the same device. In addition to founders, Viv got a good number of early Siri engineers. From this and other hints I gather its internals are similar to first few versions of Siri. For example, they outsource the Speech component (something Apple still does for several languages). A conseq…

I believe it's possible, they have already tried putting all kinds of apps on their devices that are meant to replace Google functionality.

Some of it worked, some or even most of it didn't.

One thing that we should keep in mind is that some US based services do not work nearly as good in other languages as they do in English.

For example Google Now didn't work as well in German as it did in English for a very long time. Maybe it's still like this to this day. (didn't try it anymore for some time)

So I can absolutely imagine that currently Google Now in Korean/Chinese is worse than Siri/Google Now was in its first iteration in English. For us in the West their apps might look bad and unusable, but to people in Asia our apps might look equally bad and unusable.

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#18

Post by cstejerean »

jjcm wrote: post #9

I'm amazed that the founders didn't have some sort of non-compete agreement here. Excited that it's a more extensible digital assistant though. I think the reason why I like Alexa the most out of the services right now is that it feels like the easiest to add new functionality too. Hopefully this will pave the way for more open ai assistants.

California doesn't believe in non-competes. The state believes that competition is in the public interest and enforcing non-competes would be counter to that.

Re: Samsung acquires Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by creators of Apple’s Siri

#19

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

It's very disappointing that Apple got stuck with Siri and does not really improve on what they have. I assume part of it has to do with the fact that they are very careful about customer data and a lot of what makes assistants useful is having as much data in the cloud as possible.

Still. As an iOS user I'm very jealous of what exists on other platforms now.

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