Analysts Say Siri Has Gotten Smarter, But Lags The Competition

Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, has made some major improvements in the last few months, CNBC reported.

Gene Munster and Will Thompson, two researchers from Loup Ventures, tested Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Siri and Google Assistant. They found that Siri correctly answered 74.6 percent of the 800 questions administered. Alexa answered 72.5 percent correctly, Cortana answered 63.4 percent and Google Assistant scored the highest at 87.9 percent.

The questions were from four categories: local information, general information, navigation and commerce. The researchers also scored the assistants on correct answers to commands.

Siri is perceived as the dumbest of the voice assistants and scored lowest in the information category, which means it couldn’t answer general questions, like “Who do the Dolphins play tonight?”

Loup Ventures also laid out how much each assistant improved over time. “Over a 12-month period, Google Home improved by seven percentage points, Echo by nine points, Siri (nine-month) by 22 points, and Cortana by seven points in terms of questions answered correctly,” the report said.

Apple continues to try and improve Siri over its competitors. The company hired AI exec John Giannandrea away from Google and promoted him to Apple’s executive team, where he now reports directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The problem seems to be one of perception, as most people just don’t think Siri is very smart, as it just can’t seem to answer general questions.

Last month, Google Assistant launched support for Siri Shortcuts with its latest update.

Born in 2017, iOS for Assistant can perform all the same functions as the Google Home smart speaker, including answering questions, ordering takeout, controlling smart devices in one’s home and more. Now, according to reports, the latest update of Assistant for iOS allows users to record a phrase like “Okay Google” or “Hey Google” and, from then on, whenever it is said to Siri, the Assistant app will open and listen for a question or command.