Apple has filed for a patent (number 20210318901) that shows it wants to make it easier for third party services to be integrated into Siri, the company’s “personal digital assistant.”
About the patent filing
In the patent filing, Apple notes that recent advances in natural language processing have enabled users to interact with digital assistant systems using natural language, in spoken or textual forms. Such digital assistant systems can interpret the user’s input to deduce the user’s intent, translate the deduced intent into actionable tasks and parameters, execute operations or deploy services to perform the tasks, and produce output that is intelligible to the user.
Apple says that, ideally, the output produced by a digital assistant system should fulfill the user’s intent expressed during the natural language interaction between the user and the digital assistant system. However, the ability of a digital assistant system to produce satisfactory responses to user requests depends on the natural language processing, knowledge base, and artificial intelligence available to the digital assistant system. Apple adds that, what’s more, while numerous third party systems and services currently exist, there’s “no efficient means for a digital assistant system to integrate efficiently with such third party computer systems and services.” The tech is looking to change this.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “The electronic device with one or more processors and memory receives an input of a user. The electronic device, in accordance with the input, identifies a respective task type from a plurality of predefined task types associated with a plurality of third party service providers.
“The respective task type is associated with at least one third party service provider for which the user is authorized and at least one third party service provider for which the user is not authorized. In response to identifying the respective task type, the electronic device sends a request to perform at least a portion of a task to a third party service provider of the plurality of third party service providers that is associated with the respective task type.”
