Apple is reportedly set to unleash virtual-assistant technology from Siri and facial-recognition software from Polar Rose into iOS 5 to better compete with Android.
Crucial acquisitions
Apple made in virtual-assistant and facial-recognition technologies to help its
iPhone better compete with Google Android handsets are coming to fruition in
the next version of iOS.
Apple is
reportedly adding virtual-assistant technology from Siri and
facial-recognition software from Polar Rose into
iOS 5, according to the
9-to-5 Mac
blog.
Both
technologies pose an interesting challenge to Android smartphones, for which
Google has provided rudimentary virtual-assistant technology but has yet to use
facial recognition to fortify the user experience.
As
9-to-5 Mac noted, one of the advantages
Android has over iOS is the
Voice Actions technology, which lets users speak
specific commands into their smartphones to browse the Web, send texts and make
calls.
Siri was working on such capabilities and more,
including allowing users to book a restaurant reservation or reserve a taxi,
before it was
acquired by Apple in April 2010.
Siri, in
conjunction with Apple's partnership with speech-recognition specialist Nuance
Communications, could be used to provide voice navigation, voice control and
voice assistance to iOS 5, which is reportedly launching on the iPhone 5 this
fall.
Speech data
collected via Nuance and Siri on iOS 5 will be crowd-sourced, and Apple will
let users send their data to Apple so they can improve the service over time.
This idea would be similar to how
Google collected words from its Google-411 directory service
to improve speech recognition.
Moreover, the
blog said Apple plans to open up facial recognition it gained from its
September 2010
purchase of Polar Rose as a public developer API
for iOS 5 applications.
The idea is to
let programmers cultivate facial recognition in their own applications for
Apple's iTunes App Store. The move is a cagey way to dodge some of the privacy heat
Apple would no doubt face if it launched a standalone facial-recognition application
on iOS 5.
Google has
deliberately avoided a similar fate by keeping facial recognition out of its
Google Goggles visual-search software on Android phones.
The search
giant did, however, just
acquire facial-recognition provider PittPatt,
whose algorithms could be used in Android applications or even to improve photo
suggestions in the new Google+ social network.
Facebook is
feeling the heat from incorporating facial recognition
to improve photo tagging.
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