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National: Britain's Evi takes on Apple's Siri in the search for the perfect smartphone assistant: A Cambridge company is outsmarting the tech giant with its own talking mobile phone aide - which can even understand Geordie(Observer (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Siri, the talking personal assistant that became an instant hit on the iPhone, now has a British rival called Evi. Impersonated by Robin Williams on chatshows and described by Google's former chief, Eric Schmidt, as a "competitive threat", Siri is credited with having given the iPhone personality, but it has often failed to impress British users. Unlike its American rival, Evi is able to look up UK businesses and maps, and the Cambridge scientists who created it say it is better at recognising regional accents. While Siri's qualities have been lost in translation when decoding Scottish, Welsh or Geordie accents, Evi has been among the most popular apps in Apple's UK store and is approaching half a million downloads worldwide in the three weeks it has been available. Illustrated by a cyclops smiley face whose single eye moves while it searches, Evi has the edge on its American rival because it works on Android and Apple phones. The product of years of research into artificial intelligence, Evi is described by its creators as "smarter than a search engine", because its software understands what you want to know. While Siri relies on external databases for answers, such as the online encyclopedia Wolfram Alpha, Evi has a painstakingly amassed collection of 635m facts. Its creator, the Cambridge start-up True Knowledge, is adding to the database all the time by scouring Wikipedia, Yellow Pages and other sources. "Evi is self-aware, and can hold millions of simultaneous conversations," says William Tunstall-Pedoe, the computer science graduate who founded True Knowledge. "Siri doesn't really know things itself, it calls out to other services. Evi knows the answer, illustrates it with images, and you can ask follow-ups." Evi appears to be more interested in cooking than its counterpart. Asked how to make apple crumble, it shows a link to a recipe from Wikihow entitled "How to Make Apple Crumble: 10 steps (with pictures)". Siri simply asks if it should perform a web search. Evi does not yet know the weather, although forecasts for the UK and North America will be added within the next few days. It knows where a questioner is by using satellite information, and can work out new facts using its existing knowledge, to answer questions such as "Who was president when the Queen was a teenager?" By guessing the references are likely to be to the Queen of England and the US president, Evi works out when Elizabeth II was a teenager and finds the answer (Roosevelt and Truman). Designed to be culturally neutral but occasionally betraying its British origins, Evi asks users to "wait a mo" while it thinks. It responds to the question "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?" with a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, saying "Of course the answer is 42, but understanding the question is much harder." Evi's creator enjoys difficult questions. He is the developer of Anagram Genius, a program that solves cryptic crossword clues, which Dan Brown used to generate the anagrams in The Da Vinci Code. "Apple is the world's largest tech company. We are a 20-person company in Cambridge that is taking them on," says Tunstall-Pedoe. WHICH IPHONE ASSISTANT IS BETTER? SIRI Beam me up, Scotty Please remove your belt, shoes and jacket, and empty your pockets Will you marry me? That's sweet, is there anything else I can help you with? Tell me a joke Two iPhones walk into a bar. . . I forget the rest Do I need an umbrella this evening? I don't know where you are EVI Beam me up, Scotty Limited, the secretarial or translation business based in London Will you marry me? Afraid that's not possible, I'm a computer Tell me a joke What do you call a grizzly with no teeth? A gummy bear! Do I need an umbrella this evening? I don't know right now - try asking again next week ON OTHER PAGES Hello, it's your pyjamas calling you: the latest mobile gadgets Business, this section, page 49 How rival teams laid claim to be the fathers of computing John Naughton, The New Review, 18-19 (c) 2012 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |