Let the Apple-Samsung rivalry continue. Samsung is buying Viv Labs, the company formed by the creators of Apple’s Siri digital assistant.
Apple acquired Siri Inc., the company behind the Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface (yep, Siri) on April 28, 2010, for more than $200 million. Siri, Inc. had announced that their software would be available for BlackBerry and for phones running Android, but all development efforts for non-Apple platforms were cancelled after the acquisition by Apple.
In May Siri creators Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer — who left Apple shortly after their company was scooped up — debuted Viv, the natural descendent of Siri — and more advanced that Apple’s technology. Through the power of natural language processing skills, Viv understands complex, layered commands. It’s an an AI virtual system that aims to be “the intelligent interface for everything.”
As opposed to short term memory platforms like Siri, Viv was able to embrace follow-up questions without stuttering or gasping for context that was just said seconds before. It’s also an open system that enables developers to plug into and create an intelligent, conversational interface to anything.
