Apple acquired a company called Voysis this week, which is an artificial intelligence startup that can help Apple improve Siri‘s skills in understanding natural language.
Apple just acquired the weather app Dark Sky, followed by the AI startup Voysis, which was somewhat unexpected.
The Irish company Voysis has been working to improve the experience of using digital voice assistants in online shopping applications, so it can more accurately respond to user voice commands.
In the company’s currently deleted webpage, it is said that AI technology can narrow the scope of product search results by processing shopping phrases (such as “I need a new LED TV” and “my budget is $ 1,000”). Voysis provided this AI technology to other companies to help them integrate it into their applications and voice assistants.
Foreign media 9to5mac said that Google Assistant has a clear lead in natural language understanding and processing, and the acquisition of Voysis may allow Apple’s Siri to narrow this gap.
Voysis ’system utilizes Wavenets technology, an AI-based method for creating more human-like computer speech, which was first developed by Google ’s DeepMind in 2016.
Voysis co-founder Peter Cahill said in 2018 that his company has thinned their AI system, and after training the AI, the system software will only occupy 25 MB of memory. It is also easy for smartphones to run this system.
Apple said they would “acquire some smaller technology companies from time to time. We generally do not discuss our purpose or plan.”