“I want to learn everything about everything,” Scarlett Johansson murmurs….
“I want to learn everything about everything,” Scarlett Johansson murmurs.
Those aren’t the words of an ambitious Hollywood actress. They’re spoken by “Samantha,” the world’s “first intelligent operating system.” With nothing more than language, curiosity, and a zest for virtual life, Samantha entices her shy, awkward owner to fall in love.
Ridiculous? Not in the mind of Spike Jonze, who wrote Her, a movie opening this November and starring Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix. Completely coincidentally, forging emotional bonds with users is key to the strategy that Nuance Communications is employing to compete with Apple’s Siri and Google’s Google Now, today’s dominant digital assistants.
Apple, Google, Nuance, and other companies envision a service that “knows” the weather, your calendar, traffic conditions, and other information, and can deliver it to you across your phone, your computer, your TV, and eventually your car. At Apple and Google, the approach has focused on data: contributing it, collecting it, and collating it.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here