Viv Labs has demonstrated its attempt at a virtual assistant that could beat Siri in a multitude of tasks. Named Viv, the demonstration on Monday at
TechCrunch Disrupt showed off what the assistant was capable of doing, just as previously
suggested in an earlier report, with co-founder Dag Kittlaus also taking time to reveal some of the back-end workings of the software, and how developers could use it to their advantage.
Typical queries were
shown to be pulled off with relative ease by Viv, but quickly became complex in nature. For example, Viv could parse a queries such as "Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?" The software also had hooks into various online services, which allowed Kittlaus to book a room from Hotels.com for a specific date and location, to be presented with a selection of flowers for a loved one, and to also request an Uber ride, all without entering the apps operated by the various services or entering any extra payment information.
Showing the behind-the-scenes of Viv, Kittlaus revealed Nuance is used to transcribe spoken words, with Viv itself using the resulting text to work out exactly what was being asked, and to come up with a suitable response. Kittlaus notes that the open nature of the platform means the decision process of what services to use and how best to respond is performed by Viv entirely, rather than being coded to respond in a specific way for a specific kind of query, as this allows it to scale up in line with increasing numbers of connected services.
Viv itself has its roots in Siri. Some of the functionality with third-party services were included within Siri before Apple acquired the assistant and altered the software to remove this element. Viv Labs has apparently been approached by Google and Facebook over using the technology, but it does not appear that either avenue will end in an acquisition anytime soon.
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