Viv might be the creation of those that had also put together Siri though there already is a huge generation gap between the two siblings in the realm of personal digital assistants. That is exactly what Dag Kittlaus stressed on when he went to the stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC to demo what the Viv is capable of.
In fact, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer can be considered the real brains behind all the artificial intelligence that the Siri boasts of though Apple has a completely different take on the way a digital assistant should function – basically transforming human verbal requests into web searches.
Obviously, Kittlaus and co. wanted a deeper involvement of the assistant in solving user’s queries or requests. This is where the Viv comes into the picture, after having been in development for the past four years. And the results are impressive indeed going by the way Viv was able to handle even complex user’s queries at the launch event.
Another notable quality of Viv is its ability to make purchases on behalf of the user thanks to the connections that it enjoys with third-party merchants. Also, it is here that the Viv has emerged to be the game changer vis-a-vis every other digital assistant in town, which includes the likes of Google Now, Cortana and Siri.
Interestingly, Viv’s way of working is also quite similar to that of Amazon’s Alexa in that both rely on deep connections with third-party services to pull off its tasks. That is also the reason Viv is able to accomplish such requests as: “Send Adam 20 bucks” or “Send my mom some flowers.”
That apart, Viv was quite adept in dealing with almost all that Kittlaus threw at it during the event. From the relatively simple: “Was it raining in Seattle three Thursdays ago?” to a more complex: “Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?” Viv has been able to handle all those with élan and in a matter of seconds.
In what can be considered to be another huge advantage with Viv is its open platform nature. This makes Viv to be compliant with all mobile devices irrespective of those running Android, iOS or Windows. The team behind Viv has already made it known they wish to see Viv running on all computing platforms or even gadgets and appliances. That’s enough hint of the team’s intention of tapping into the emerging IoT segment and Viv no doubt can work wonders here.
That is not all as Viv has also been designed to continuously evolve its knowledge base based on the experience it gains in accomplishing present tasks. What that means is that with Viv, users have a digital assistant that is always learning and hence has an ever widening scope at solving user’s tasks. That is in contrast to the likes of Siri that operates within a very limited functionality while relegating the rest of web search.
Meanwhile, Facebook too has said they intend to follow a similar approach with its bot strategy on its Messenger platform – encouraging companies to create bots or programs that the users can interact with in a conversational manner from right within the Messenger app itself.
Microsoft is another company that too is betting big time on bots, something that the tech major devoted a considerable amount of time discussing at its developer’s conference a few weeks back.
Coming back to Viv, while it impressed with its ability to deal with complex situations or make purchases for the user, there is no word yet as to when is the earliest we can expect it to debut on our devices.
