Categories: Mobile

Apple’s 25 year-old concept finally realised in Siri ‘intelligent assistant’

Among a slew of reports flooding from Apple’s iPhone event this evening lies one of their most important announcements in recent years – Siri. Siri is an all-new intelligent voice-control feature in iOS5 and will be available on the forthcoming iPhone 4S. But Siri isn’t strictly a new concept at Apple. Siri’s vision was originally devised almost 25 years ago by Apple and was known as Knowledge Navigator.

With Siri, iPhone 4S users pose questions to their device out loud. Siri makes sense of this verbal input and presents results and performs relevant tasks accordingly. The system can then itself respond verbally back to the user to confirm, clarify or disambiguate actions – something which is remarkably similar to the original Knowledge Navigator concept.

Task examples include organising meetings, checking the weather in any location or querying Wikipedia. Here’s Apple’s contemporary realisation of Knowledge Navigator:

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

  • The whole thing creeps me right out. People look mental enough as it is when they're on headphones having actual conversations with other people but talking to your phone and having it answer you is ridiculous. I really don't like this at all...

    • @seanear1ey I see what you mean. Maybe the phone responding verbally is a bit out there. Still, it's probably useful to select groups of people - visually impaired, people with stubby fingers...

    • come on this is the opposite of creepy. Being able to tell your phone something and have it respond it convenient and in 5 years it will be standard on all phones.

  • The whole thing creeps me right out. People look mental enough as it is when they're on headphones having actual conversations with other people but talking to your phone and having it answer you is ridiculous. I really don't like this at all...

    • @seanear1ey I see what you mean. Maybe the phone responding verbally is a bit out there. Still, it's probably useful to select groups of people - visually impaired, people with stubby fingers...

    • come on this is the opposite of creepy. Being able to tell your phone something and have it respond it convenient and in 5 years it will be standard on all phones.

Recent Posts

How Coca-Cola’s AI blueprint gives modern founders a massive edge

Coca-Cola is building AI agents – and it does not mean automating the can. The…

6 hours ago

‘A digital pandemic is a plausible scenario’: ITU flagship report

The ITU digital pandemic scenario is like the sequel to Cyber Polygon -- prepping for…

5 days ago

One Way Summit returns to San Francisco with expanded format and star-studded speaker lineup 

One Way Ventures has announced the dates and lineup for the second edition of the…

6 days ago

AIM 2026 opens with Chris Schembra, Barbara Corcoran and Get Covered unpacking the apartment industry’s AI moment and more

Interest in the apartment industry is reaching fever pitch as author Chris Schembra, mogul Barbara…

1 week ago

Is LinkedIn Tracking Your Browser Activity? Here’s What’s Behind It

Let’s take a closer look at ‘Browsergate’: is LinkedIn really running the biggest corporate espionage…

2 weeks ago

Techstars Startup Weekend bets on Valencia as a next European startup launchpad

Valencia’s tech ecosystem is getting a big win this June 12-14 as Techstars Startup Weekend announces…

2 weeks ago