Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant

Bringing Intelligence to the Interface

Tom Gruber
CTO & cofounder, Siri
© 2009 Siri, Inc. All rights reserved.
It was imaginable 20 years ago.

Apple's
Apple's Visionary
Visionary Video:
Video:
Knowledge
Knowledge Navigator
Navigator (1987)
(1987)

from www.open-video.org
 Interaction with the Assistant

 Touch screens and cinematic animation

 Global network for info and collaboration
 Awareness of temporal and social context
 Continuous Speech in and out
 Conversational Interface - assistant talks back
 Delegation of tasks to the assistant
 Assistant use of personal data
 How Close are we Today?

 Touch screens
 Cinematic effects
 Global network
 Location and time awareness
 Speech out, on demand
 Isolated speech to text

But where is the interface for assistance?

 Conversational Interface
Location Awareness
Speech to Text Semantic Data
Time Awareness
Text to Intent Services APIs
Task Awareness
Dialog flow
Task & Domain
Models
Access to Personal Information
A Virtual Personal Assistant
 A Virtual Personal Assistant:

 Does Things for You

focus on task completion

 Gets What you Say

intent understanding via conversation
 Gets to Know You
learns and applies personal information
 A VPA helps you get things done

TIRED

"what do you want to read?" "at your service"

"at your service(s)"
 Siri Helping you Do Things
II found
found the following Italian
the following Italian
restaurants
restaurants that
that reviews
reviews say
say are
are
romantic near your
romantic near your home
home
 Multiple-criteria vertical
search and browse
 combining multiple
sources of information
Your
Your table is reserved
table is reserved for
for 22  with integrated
Saturday
Saturday night
night atat 8:00pm.
8:00pm.
transactions
 and social
communication

Your invitation
Your invitation has
has been
been sent
sent to
to
friend@email.com
friend@email.com
Employing the services of...

Contacts Email Maps

So what's the big deal?

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.

Lots of Steps, Lots of Apps

Apps required to do meal planning flow

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.
 And Lots of Tasks

Plan a Meal Find a store

Find something to do
Plan a trip

Go to the movies
...
(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.
 A Virtual Personal Assistant:

 Does Things for You

focus on task completion

 Gets What you Say

intent understanding via conversation
 Gets to Know You
learns and applies personal information

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.

Understanding Intent in Context

 Location Context  Task Context

... near home
... near home ... [serving] burgers
... [serving] burgers

... in downtown
... in downtown [San
[San Jose]
Jose] ...
... [described as] romantic
[described as] romantic

 Time Context  Dialog Context

... this
... this weekend
weekend ...
... hotels
hotels in
in Boston
Boston

... weather
... weather [in
[in Boston]
Boston]
... tomorrow
... tomorrow night
night

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.

 A Virtual Personal Assistant:

 Does Things for You

focus on task completion

 Gets What you Say

intent understanding via conversation
 Gets to Know You
learns and applies personal information

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.

 Virtual Assistant Evolution
Doing Things For You
Service APIs Data feeds Auth Standards SW & Data Commons

Faceted Search Domains Recommendation Services

Getting What You Say

Location Speech Semantic NLP Linguistic NLP

Date/time Conversational UI Social Contexts

Getting Personal
Contacts Calendars Explicit Preferences

Profile Favorites Learned Preferences

Today Tomorrow Future (c) 2009 Siri, Inc.

For More Information

www.siri.com

(c) 2009 Siri, Inc.