SiriOS may be released soon to help Apple's smart home ecosystem

Following iOS, MacOS, watchOS and iPadOS, Apple's another operating system SiriOS is about to be born.

So far, although we cannot know the exact design and specific functions of SiriOS, according to foreign media reports, Apple is likely to release this operating system at WWDC in 2020 to further expand the Siri ecosystem and allow developers and various applications to call Siri.

Apple will launch SiriOS

Siri is now 8 years old since Apple launched it on the iPhone. After 8 years, Siri has not maintained the same high standard as the iPhone. Instead, it has been criticized for its intelligence problems, such as slow voice recognition, low accuracy, and limited number of supported functions.

In February this year, Apple acquired Pullstring, a San Francisco-based smart voice application developer. The company currently promotes solutions based on "Pullstring Converse" and "Pullstring Conversation Cloud". Among them, Converse has been updated to version 2.0, which can provide engineers with an AI conversational interface, allowing engineers to design voice user interfaces more intuitively.

Now, Apple has chosen to launch SiriOS and continue to increase its investment in voice recognition. Can it make up for the shortcomings of previous voice assistants?

According to the latest leaked product information, SiriOS is a software system independent of the device operating system. Whether it runs on iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, it is developed independently. Technicians can write applications to integrate them with SiriOS to ensure that their functions can be accessed across Apple's ecosystem.

By separating SiriOS, Siri's functionality can be fully parity across Apple's operating systems, with changes being made simultaneously on all devices. Currently, HomePod has a limited level of functionality due to the limitations of Siri, and the introduction of SiriOS could take HomePod's functionality to a higher level.

Previously, Apple launched SiriKit, which allows iOS applications to access Siri's voice commands in specific scenarios, but the application must be installed to use it. Now, for developers, ideally SiriOS will not be subject to many existing restrictions of SiriKit, nor do they need to understand how the specific Siri in each device's operating system works.

Whether Apple can produce something like SiriOS, however, will depend on whether it is willing to cede control of its iconic virtual assistant to a third party.

41% of users are concerned about privacy and security issues

According to the latest data released by Strategy Analytics, by the end of the fourth quarter of this year, Amazon's smart voice assistant Alexa is expected to account for 68% of the overall smart voice market, while Google's voice assistant Google Assistant accounts for 24%. Before 2020, Amazon and Google will continue to dominate the smart voice market.

In terms of market share, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant can be said to have an absolute advantage. However, just a few months ago, both were exposed to privacy and security issues.

In April this year, Bloomberg revealed that Amazon hired thousands of employees worldwide to improve Alexa's services. However, this team mainly collects users' commands to Alexa and provides corresponding feedback.

Although Amazon said in a later statement that access to internal tools is highly controlled and only a small number of employees who need the data are allowed to improve services by processing very small interaction samples, this incident has caused some trouble for users who pay attention to privacy and security.

Coincidentally, Google has also faced questions from users about its privacy and security issues.

Previously, Google's decision to add assistant voice control to the Nest security system caused dissatisfaction among users nearly a year after its implementation. The reason was that Google built a microphone into its Nest shield, collecting its voice information without the user's knowledge, but did not mention the existence of this microphone in the product description.

In response to the issue, Google said that the microphone should have been listed in the product manual, which was a mistake we made, and it was originally intended to cope with future security upgrades, such as detecting broken glass. However, this is not the company's first privacy-related mistake. It was fined tens of millions of dollars in France for its opaque data consent policy.

A report published by Microsoft in April this year showed that 41% of users of smart voice assistants and smart voice technology expressed concerns about trust, privacy and passive listening.

In many situations, voice is a more natural way of interaction than hand operation, but what we still lack is a sufficiently powerful and secure voice assistant. Apple CEO Cook once said that the reason why Siri has not been improved for a long time is because privacy-related issues have not been completely resolved.

SiriOS will help Apple's smart home ecosystem

Now that it is reported that Apple is about to launch SiriOS, does it mean that it has found a solution to privacy-related issues?

After Amazon was found to be eavesdropping on user conversations and hidden microphones in Google Nest devices were discovered, investment firm Mangrove said technology companies should adopt Apple's approach to responding to user concerns because that is what Apple "has been doing particularly effectively."

For example, Apple acquired Silk Labs, an AI startup focused on privacy and security. It mainly studies on-device artificial intelligence software that can be processed on the iPhone or iPad without relying on communications related to cloud servers. In terms of specific implementation methods, Silk Labs' AI platform is embedded in the SoC in the form of software, so as to combine with the end-side device and transmit data. In terms of application scenarios, the application can be applied to sound monitoring, person monitoring, face recognition, object monitoring, etc. Silk Labs strictly emphasizes the importance of privacy, including key data acquisition, data anonymity, etc.

This acquisition was called a "smart move" by the outside world, and it is also in line with Apple's consistent style to protect user privacy.

The privacy issues that Apple was worried about in the past have been resolved, and the new technology that has been under development can now be officially introduced to users. Bret Kinsella of Voicebot.ai said that SiriOS will be another major innovation of Apple, with the same status as Amazon and Google's voice assistants.

In the smart home market worth trillions of dollars, the three major technology giants, Amazon, Google and Apple, have been actively developing related businesses.

In the early years, Google acquired Nest at a sky-high price, but the final result was not satisfactory. In the end, it took a similar approach to Amazon and entered the smart home field by combining voice assistants and smart speakers.

Apple, on the other hand, has built a smart home ecosystem based on HomeKit and third-party hardware. These devices can be controlled using tools in our lives, such as iPhone, Apple Watch, etc. Apple relies on HomeKit and hopes that Siri will become an ubiquitous AI assistant. The rumored SiriOS product may become a major product in the construction of Apple's smart home ecosystem, helping Siri rise and become a force that cannot be ignored in the field of voice recognition.

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