I remember the introduction of Siri on the iPhone 4S long time. This would be a magical feature of Apple that no one could ever follow. Instead of digging through the settings and apps, you can just talk to your Iphone.
Competitors, however, soon appeared. Who could forget S Voice, the forgettable voice assistant from Samsung, who ended up being replaced by the equally forgettable Bixby. Then there was Google Now. This product was a little more refined, but Google Assistant has now shown that it was the past.
What can I help you with? Siri, we need to talk.
James Martin / CNET
Somehow, Amazon got into the voice assistant fight with a tubular speaker known as Echo. This was an incredibly strange product at its launch. Why would I want a speaker to hear me anyway? What did Amazon know about voice assistants?
It turns out that Amazon knew a lot. Gave his virtual assistant Alexa a wide variety of skills. Then, Google Assistant, presented as its own personal Google, began to show its intelligence.
Siri received minor updates during all of this, but it is far from the best in class. That said, Apple can still turn things around. Siri has received some improvements recently, since Apple hired a former Googler, John Giannandrea, to be the vice president of machine learning and AI strategy in 2018. Watch my video above for much more.