"Hey Siri"
"Little Love for Classmates"
"Little Art"
...
Although today, voice assistants can't escape the daily life of being teased, we are also getting used to calling Siri to do simple things such as setting an alarm clock or checking the weather in private. However, when calling Siri or "Little X", have you ever wondered: How did these names come from?
Siri, which appeared on the iPhone 4S in 211, is undoubtedly the leader of this round of voice assistant trend, and its related information is also detailed, so we will start with Siri to explore the naming of voice assistants.
Strictly speaking, siri is not 1% "Made in Apple". It first appeared in the App Store as an application, and its name comes from the daughter of a former colleague of its developer Kittalaus. 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 regret in her own products.
Siri quickly caught Apple's attention after it was put on the App Store in 21. Only three weeks later, Kittalaus received a phone call from Jobs, and then he flew to Jobs' home in Cupertino to talk with him for three hours. In April of the same year, Apple pocketed Siri for $2 million.
When choosing Siri to name its voice recognition technology and company, Kittalaus thought the name was "easy to write and easy to read", and many people also thought that Siri's success was largely due to its good name. Surprisingly, Jobs didn't like the name at first, and one of the main problems was that Siri's pronunciation of "Shiri" in Japanese meant "ass".
However, Apple has scratched its head from top to bottom and failed to come up with a better name. As stubborn as Jobs, it can only compromise. But now it seems that there is nothing wrong with the solidity of Kittalaus. This simple and catchy name has become synonymous with voice assistants and a benchmark that other companies try to surpass.
Cortana of Microsoft has a completely different origin.
its name comes from Cortana, an artificial intelligence in Halo, a well-known game owned by Microsoft. This is a female character who was originally set to help human beings, but was finally found to have evil tendencies. When Microsoft began to develop a voice assistant against Siri, it used Cortana as the project code. Unexpectedly, after the name was leaked, it was particularly popular among 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 that something is wrong.
Alexa is inspired by the voice and dialogue system in Star Trek, and Amazon's developers hope it is as knowledgeable and available as the computer in the novel. By the way, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is an hardcore 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, and X surrounded by soft vowels is highly recognizable and easier to be recognized by machines. Developers also think that Alexa's name is easy to remind people of the famous Alexandria Library, giving people a knowledgeable impression.
As mentioned earlier, the "X" in the middle of Alexa can make the name more accurately recognized by the machine, but Bixby, who is also in the middle of the "X", has become the most difficult pronunciation assistant in history, without one.
the pronunciation of "x" in Bixby is "consonant combination" of "k" and "s", which is difficult for people in many areas, even in South Korea, the home base of Samsung. What's more, the "X" is followed by a "B" to form a combination of three consonants (K, S, B), which is difficult for by going up one flight of stairs.
like apple's Siri, Samsung's Bixby is also purchased from outside, and the purchase price is more than 2 million dollars. Coincidentally, the person in charge of the acquired Viv lab in California also participated in the development of Siri. But why should we give the voice assistant such an awkward name? Samsung has never given an answer.
compared with its competitors, Google's name for its own voice assistant is too casual, and Google Assistant is not as straightforward as a name.
xiaodu
after talking about foreign voice assistants, let's take a 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) was not much better. The name "Xiaodi" is equally straightforward. If there is any advantage, it is probably shorter and easier to read than Google Assistant.
Xiao Ai Classmate
Xiaomi's voice assistant Xiao Ai Classmate is a well-known voice assistant in China, but this seemingly simple name has also been tested for half a year. Nandier, the design director of Xiaomi, once wrote an article detailing the origin of Xiao Ai's name.
At first, researchers used a kind name that they thought was in line with Xiaomi's temperament: "Xiaomi Nana". However, due to the pronunciation and recognition problems of reduplicated 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 voice assistant's name was four words, and from the point of view of easy memory, the format was determined as: name+title, and finally it was locked in "Little Love Classmate".
according to Xiaomi, the pinyin "AI" of the word "love" is the English abbreviation of artificial intelligence, and the word "little love" appears less frequently in daily conversations, which solves the problem of false awakening. Classmate is a name that everyone has had, which is kind and decent, and at the same time represents that Xiaomi's artificial intelligence is constantly learning and growing.
In addition to Xiao Ai's classmates and Xiao Du, I found that other domestic manufacturers especially prefer the word "Xiao" when naming their voice assistants. For example,
We believe that these seemingly unremarkable names have a similar process of repeated deliberation with Xiao Ai's classmates, but unfortunately, except Xiao Ai's classmates, other domestic manufacturers are too low-key and rarely disclose the naming reasons of their voice assistants, such as Xiao Ai of Huawei. The only thing we can know is that Xiaoyi's English name is Celia, but the origin of this English name is as unpredictable as its Chinese name. However, if you like, Xiaoyi can be changed to "Xiaoai Classmate" or "Siri", and domestic companies can still play.