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Personalized Hey Siri

machinelearning.apple.com

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they don't want to give users too much control; Siri is an important brand by itself and Apple doesn't want people going around skipping it.

Yes. In this case, the selection of a wake word ("Alexa") or phrase ("Hey Siri" or "OK Google") is driven primarily by performance (i.e., reduction of false accepts & false rejects). The folks designing these products know that, even though customers say that they'd like to customize the wake word or phrase, if the actual performance is significantly worse, those customers will not be happy. We experimented with this…

But it's infuriating when you don't want to use the phrase and/or want to have a secret phrase. Better would be to allow customers to choose their own phrase and give immediate feedback, during setup, on how good it's likely to be.

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#32
post #25

My biggest problem with the homepod is that my 5 year old has learned that he can turn on _any song he wants_ whenever he wants by yelling "hey siri." He loves it! He yells at the dinner table, when his little sister is asleep, and when we are on the phone. His favorite phrase is "Hey Siri, set volume to 100%." His favorite song is the PJ Masks song, which Siri dutifully plays when called upon. Every. Single. Time. I…

Unfortunately “Hey Siri” starts to grate the 70th time you say it in 3 days. I would actually now rather walk across the room to touch the Homepod than have to say the phrase so much. It’s still in uncanny valley territory a lot of the time as it isn’t smart enough to keep context between interactions or react in a human-like way.

I think a retroactive activation feature would be the way to go, ie. be able to say “Siri” at the end of a sentence and have it parse the phrase that came before. It feels more natural to say “skip this please Siri” than “Hey Siri, skip” because it lets you amend the mistake of not identifying the subject earlier in the sentence rather than the phrase-exasperation-hey Siri-phrase.

I asked Siri to DJ and my daughter said “hey Siri, I don’t like that song”. Siri said “I’ll remember that” and played something else. Now I have no idea how to amend Siri’s notion that I dislike one of my favourite tracks. There should really be a Homepod app where you can see recent interactions and correct misinterpreted ones.

There are also some artists and tracks with unusual spellings that are always going to cause problems for a voice interface and so they need a solution for that.

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#33
post #27
post #12

Cool little insight into their progress. I'm excited for the day Siri can differentiate my voice and my wife's so we can use a single HomePod with two iCloud accounts. For example, Siri reading off calendar appointments from an iCloud account based on who's asking.

That feature is not blocked by technical but by arbitrary limits. Whether it is a family iPad, Apple TV or HomePod, Apple strongly believes in 1:1 device-person (or more accurate, device-iCloud account) mapping.

Macs do multi account quite well, and iOS/iPad does it for schools. I’m not sure why Apple hasn’t at least made iPads for consumers have the same multi-iCloud-account feature available, it would make things a lot easier at home!

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they don't want to give users too much control; Siri is an important brand by itself and Apple doesn't want people going around skipping it.

Yes. In this case, the selection of a wake word ("Alexa") or phrase ("Hey Siri" or "OK Google") is driven primarily by performance (i.e., reduction of false accepts & false rejects). The folks designing these products know that, even though customers say that they'd like to customize the wake word or phrase, if the actual performance is significantly worse, those customers will not be happy. We experimented with this…

If you can share, what kind of variation in F1 score were you seeing between different trigger words? I'd expect even within a single product family (i.e. Alexa/Echo/Amazon/Computer) there's probably significant variation.

I'd also be interested in the differences between a collectively-optimized wake word (without personal training) and one which the user personally trains against their voice à la the parent article. To what extent does that personal training supplement/supplant (or fail to do so) the "good enough for everyone" wake word kernels?

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#35
post #2

On a separate note, I have yet to get Siri to transcribe "Isle of Dogs" correctly. It's always "I love dogs" which is quite ok by me :).

You should be able to say "Hey Siri, listen carefully" brief pause "isle ... of ... dogs", or some such to have the device enter a special mode where it attempts to identify individual words more accurately.

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#36
post #25

My biggest problem with the homepod is that my 5 year old has learned that he can turn on _any song he wants_ whenever he wants by yelling "hey siri." He loves it! He yells at the dinner table, when his little sister is asleep, and when we are on the phone. His favorite phrase is "Hey Siri, set volume to 100%." His favorite song is the PJ Masks song, which Siri dutifully plays when called upon. Every. Single. Time. I…

Unfortunately “Hey Siri” starts to grate the 70th time you say it in 3 days. I would actually now rather walk across the room to touch the Homepod than have to say the phrase so much. It’s still in uncanny valley territory a lot of the time as it isn’t smart enough to keep context between interactions or react in a human-like way. I think a retroactive activation feature would be the way to go, ie. be able to say “Si…

Something about "Hey Siri, ..." is much more grating to me to say than "Alexa, ...". Maybe it's just that conjunction of phonemes being rare in English?

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately “Hey Siri” starts to grate the 70th time you say it in 3 days. I would actually now rather walk across the room to touch the Homepod than have to say the phrase so much. It’s still in uncanny valley territory a lot of the time as it isn’t smart enough to keep context between interactions or react in a human-like way. I think a retroactive activation feature would be the way to go, ie. be able to say “Si…

Something about "Hey Siri, ..." is much more grating to me to say than "Alexa, ...". Maybe it's just that conjunction of phonemes being rare in English?

That's nothing compared to "Okay Google".

Try saying that three times fast. Actually, try saying it just once fast.

I always end up spitting out something like "Okaygggeellggglle"

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#38
post #2

On a separate note, I have yet to get Siri to transcribe "Isle of Dogs" correctly. It's always "I love dogs" which is quite ok by me :).

You should be able to say "Hey Siri, listen carefully" brief pause "isle ... of ... dogs", or some such to have the device enter a special mode where it attempts to identify individual words more accurately.

I've never heard about this special mode.

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#39
post #25

My biggest problem with the homepod is that my 5 year old has learned that he can turn on _any song he wants_ whenever he wants by yelling "hey siri." He loves it! He yells at the dinner table, when his little sister is asleep, and when we are on the phone. His favorite phrase is "Hey Siri, set volume to 100%." His favorite song is the PJ Masks song, which Siri dutifully plays when called upon. Every. Single. Time. I…

Unfortunately “Hey Siri” starts to grate the 70th time you say it in 3 days. I would actually now rather walk across the room to touch the Homepod than have to say the phrase so much. It’s still in uncanny valley territory a lot of the time as it isn’t smart enough to keep context between interactions or react in a human-like way. I think a retroactive activation feature would be the way to go, ie. be able to say “Si…

It could be worse. "OK Google" is annoying the first time you say it.

Re: Personalized Hey Siri

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about "Hey Siri, ..." is much more grating to me to say than "Alexa, ...". Maybe it's just that conjunction of phonemes being rare in English?

That's nothing compared to "Okay Google". Try saying that three times fast. Actually, try saying it just once fast. I always end up spitting out something like "Okaygggeellggglle"

You can say "Hey Google".
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