"Little Love Classmate"
"small art"
……
Although today, voice assistants still can't escape the daily life of being teased, we have begun to get used to calling Siri privately to do some simple things, such as setting an alarm clock or checking the weather. However, when you call Siri or "Little X", have you ever thought: How did these names come from?
20 1 1 Siri, which appears on the iPhone 4S, is undoubtedly the leader of this round of voice assistant trend, and its related materials are also more detailed, so our exploration of voice assistant naming begins with Siri.
Strictly speaking, siri is not 100% "Made in Apple". It first appeared in the App Store as an application. Its name comes from the daughter of a former colleague of its developer Kitaraus. In Norwegian, "Siri" means "the beauty who leads you to victory"; In Swahili, "siri" means "secret"; In Sinhalese, "siri" means "beauty" Kittalaus likes this name very much, and even plans to name her daughter Siri, but she gave birth to a son, so she can only make up for her regrets in her own products.
After 20 10 launched the App Store, Siri quickly caught Apple's attention. Just three weeks later, Kitaraus received a phone call from Jobs, and then he flew to Jobs' home in Cupertino and talked with him for three hours. In April of the same year, Apple pocketed Siri for $200 million.
When choosing Siri to name its speech recognition technology and company, Kittalaus thought the name was "easy to write and easy to read". Many people also believe that Siri's success is largely due to its good name. Surprisingly, Jobs didn't like the name at first. One of the main problems is that Siri's pronunciation of "Shiri" in Japanese means "ass".
However, Apple scratched its head from top to bottom and failed to come up with a better name. As stubborn as Jobs, he can only compromise. But now it seems that there is no problem with the solidity of Kitaraus. This simple and catchy name has become synonymous with voice assistant and a benchmark that other companies try to surpass.
Microsoft's Cortana has a very different origin.
Its name comes from the artificial intelligence Cortana in Microsoft's famous game Halo. This is a female character, originally set to help mankind, but finally found to have evil tendencies. When Microsoft started to develop a voice assistant for Siri, it used Cortana as the project code. Unexpectedly, after the name was leaked, it was especially popular with developers and users. At their strong request, Microsoft finally agreed to use Cortana as its voice assistant. Official name.
However, naming a voice assistant after an evil AI character always makes people feel wrong.
Alexa was inspired by the voice and dialogue system in Star Trek, and Amazon's R&D staff hoped that it would be as knowledgeable and available as the computer in the novel. By the way, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is a big fan of Star Trek.
However, unlike Apple and Microsoft's random naming of voice assistants, Amazon's Alexa was named after a long scientific test. X surrounded by soft vowels is highly recognizable and easier to be recognized by machines. Developers also believe that Alexa's name is easily reminiscent of the famous Alexandria Library, giving people a knowledgeable impression.
As mentioned above, the "X" in the middle of Alexa can make the name more accurately recognized by the machine, but Bixby, who is also the center of "X", has become the most difficult voice assistant in history, without one.
The pronunciation of "X" in Bixby is a consonant combination of "K" and "S", which is difficult for people in many areas, even in South Korea, Samsung's home base. What's more, an "X" followed by a "B" forms a combination of three consonants (K, S, B), and it is difficult to go up a flight of stairs.
Like Apple's Siri, Samsung's Bixby also came from an external acquisition, and the purchase price exceeded 200 million US dollars. Coincidentally, the head of the acquired California Viv Lab also participated in the development of Siri. But why give the voice assistant such an awkward name? Samsung has never given an answer.
Compared with competitors, Google's name for its voice assistant is too casual, and Google Assistant is not as straightforward as a name.
Xiao du
After talking about foreign voice assistants, let's look at the naming of domestic manufacturers. Earlier, we complained that Google didn't care to name the voice assistant. Their China colleague Baidu (sorry, I shouldn't compare the two) is no better. The name "Xiao Di" is equally straightforward. If there is any advantage, it is probably shorter and better looking than Google Assistant.
Xiao Ai Xue Tong
Xiaomi's voice assistant "Little Love Classmate" is a well-known voice assistant in China, but this seemingly simple name has also passed the test of half a year. Nandier, the design director of Xiaomi, once wrote an article detailing the origin of Xiao Ai's name.
At first, R&D personnel used a kind name that they thought was in line with Xiaomi's temperament: "Xiaomi Nana", but due to the pronunciation and recognition problems of overlapping words, its wake-up rate was not ideal, and there was a great problem of false wake-up.
Considering the recognition, the R&D staff finally decided that the name of the voice assistant was four words, and from the point of view of easy memory, the format was determined as: name+title, and finally it was locked as "Little Love Classmate".
According to Xiaomi, the pinyin "AI" of the word "love" is the English abbreviation of artificial intelligence. The word "little love" appears less frequently in daily conversation, which solves the problem of false awakening. "Classmate" is a name that everyone has had, which is kind and appropriate, and at the same time represents the continuous learning and growth of Xiaomi's artificial intelligence.
In addition to loving classmates and students, I found that other domestic manufacturers especially prefer the word "small" when naming voice assistants, such as:
We believe that behind these seemingly unremarkable names, there is a process similar to Xiao Ai's repeated deliberation. Unfortunately, except for Xiao Ai, other domestic manufacturers are too low-key to disclose the naming reasons of their voice assistants, such as Huawei's Xiao I. The only thing we can know is that Xiao Yi's English name is Celia, but the origin of this English name is as elusive as its Chinese name, but you can change Xiao Yi to "Xiao Ai" if you like.