UPDATE-more context: Please do! “Apple to shorten 'Hey Siri'”

UPDATE: This story provides more context around this matter.

For very small values of “more”. :slight_smile:

My prior question still stands (without the pun this time): what problem does this solve?

I’m just not seeing it. And making it a rebranding, “Siri, new and improved”, as the CNN piece implies, is waisting development resources on marketing fluff, IMHO.

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I’m not sure there is a problem to solve. I just fine “hey” to be an odd language. As I pointed out previously, when I used echo devices (I no longer do), it was easy to just say “Alexa”, no prefix required and I never encountered an issue. But, in the grand scheme of things this is merely a minor annoyance, nothing of consequence unless Apple sees it as important for improving Siri. I have no opinion on that matter.

Beside, I never heard Jean-Luc-Picard say “Hey Computer.” :grin:

Me neither, but how many friends named “Computer” do you think he had? :slight_smile:

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Data? :blush: And, I’ve never heard someone called “Siri.” In fact, I’d guess that “Alexa” is far more common.

…………………………

Siri, like “Hey” (Meaning: Hello), is coming from Scandinavia, and the name is pretty common there, as it is a short form of Sigrid.
In 2010 “Siri” was on rank 57 among the most given names in Sweden.

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At least “Alexa” has become one of the most unpopular Names, since it has been used by AMZ.

I seem to recall ‘hey’ was to provide an extra syllable, and reduce accidental triggers…

Hey-Si-ri
O-K-goo-gle (or Hey-Goo-gle)
A-lex-a

Presumably Apple reckon their voice recognition is improved enough to distinguish ‘Siri’ alone from all other conversation in the device’s vicinity. Seeing Apple’s other cloud services, I’m not so sure :slight_smile:.

Being able to change the wake word on Amazon devices is certainly convenient if you happen to have a real-life Alexa in the household!

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Ha. For a while I was using “Computer” as the Echo wake word. But it made watching Star Trek reruns somewhat challenging. “Computer, rotate the shield harmonics!”

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Oh man, that made me laugh! :joy:

Jason Snell said it perfectly, and I’m paraphrasing, that this doesn’t solve any of Siri’s larger usability issues, so what purpose does this serve, ultimately?

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On its own an hey-ectomy is barely worth mentioning. But if Apple does plan to add some useful functionality that could be good.

A few years ago Google added the ability to silence their Assistant instantly with the word ‘Stop’. No ‘Ok Google’ is needed. It’s a small thing but I use it all the time to silence Alarms, Podcasts, etc. Who knows what might happen if Apple starts giving Siri a little love?

I have a new suggestion, which I think applies if they don’t actually smarten up the responses as well.

“Dumb-ass! Turn on the lights!”

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This!

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Just noting that your Apple device is, by definition, listening all the time anyway - at least if you have “hey Siri” enabled. It’s just throwing away any data that doesn’t correspond to the trigger phrase.

The real solution here is, as mentioned by others, just allowing custom trigger phrases.

The problem is that the sounds of certain English words are similar, particularly in imperfect listening environments, and the current wake words are specifically chosen to reduce instances of inadvertent triggers.

How might radio and TV cause triggers if a poor choice is made? (Trump! What’s the weather today?) Amazon automatically filters out known uses of the word ‘Alexa’ from advertisements and puts the device back to sleep.

The solution is to link the wake word with person recognition, so it’s only the person who set it up who can trigger, and to warn about poor choices. They may come as technology develops.

It has remained a constant source of disappointment to me that not one tech giant thought it would be cool to implement the Star Trek-style audio commands as standard.

Many of us were familiar with “Computer, do X”, it’s awesome to live in the future, and I feel (with no evidence to back this up) that it would’ve been less problematic than using actual people’s names.

I have never used any of these services, but I definitely would if my house was set up like a spaceship.

I think it’s just about the worst thing they could do.

In English false triggering is bad enough as it is, imagine just having “siri” as the trigger

“See here, this is…” ding! - “I’m sorry but I cannot find what you are looking for”
“I’m seeing Mike later” ding! - “I’m sorry but I cannot find what you are looking for”
“Did you get a serious reply to your” ding! - “I’m sorry but I cannot find what you are looking for”

And so on

I’ve disabled “hey siri” on all my devices simply to get rid of the annoying false-triggers that happen at least 4-5 times an hour when I’m in meetings or just chatting with my family.

Shortening to siri is going to even make that worse (especially in my native language)

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On Amazon devices you can change the wake word to ‘Computer’.

Siri has all of the same problems though. Say “I’m sorry” near any Siri device I own, and it’ll trigger. And as pointed out above, it’s not just English.

If you let me pick a custom word, I can be responsible for picking useful custom words.

…but only if you allow the devices to have multiple voice profiles, since this is on HomePods, Apple TV, etc. And of course that increases the difficulty of setup, and gets away from Apple’s “it just works” goal.

I’d happily take a “gap year” before they implement it so that they can demonstrate this fantastic, greatly-improved technology and we can all marvel at its awesomeness. It’s okay. I’ll make the sacrifice of saying “hey” for one more year. :smiley:

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