Google Project Majel, Android Repsonse To Apple Siri?

[rajanmehta 4,056]

Google’s Response To Siri is Codenamed Majel, Could Be Released Partly By End of Year

Source Taylor Wimberly.

I wrote about Google’s response to Apple’s Siri voice assistant several months ago and over the last couple weeks I received further details about the secret project. For starters it is codenamed Majel, which comes from Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, better known as the voice of the Federation Computer from Star Trek.

Majel is an evolution of Google’s Voice Actions that is currently available on most Android phones with the addition of natural language processing. Where Voice Actions required you to issue specific commands like “send text to…” or “navigate to…”, Majel will allow you to perform actions in your natural language similar to how Siri functions.

Speaking of actions, it sounds like only Google search queries will be included with the initial release, that could come as soon as this year. I say this year because I’ve heard that engineers at Google X are working around the clock on finishing the first release and the NYTimes previously reported that one product would be released by Google X this year.

December if nearly half over, so a January or February release might be more realistic. Other more advanced features like controlling phone actions and applications with natural language commands are expected to come later.

Google’s Matias Duarte had previously given hints about the future of Android’s voice actions in an interview with Slashgear. Matias said, “Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just Computer.”

I had previously speculated that Google’s approach might actually include some kind of animated avatar, but it appears I was way off on that one. However, we still expect greatly enhanced computer voices that sound more human and fluid, thanks to Google’s acquisition of Phonetic Arts, which occurred at the tail end of 2010.

Hopefully more concrete details will leak out soon. People smarter than I will read this article and I’m sure they will be able to dig up additional iformation. In the mean time, enjoy Data talking with Computer in the video below.

[manishashar 6]

Aab maza aayega

[Bablus 66]

Super news..

Looking forward to this..

[Genius 817]

This was pretty much expected what ever revolution iOS gets Android has to cheat

PS: HETAL what say?

Edited December 14, 2011 by Genius

[tanveer 59]

cheat? Isnt this called inspired innovation?

If that is how all this works, we know how much apple has cheated over the years, dont we?

[Genius 817]

^^ True i was being sarcastic way to attract HP -

[Meherab 2]

Probably HP would reply after the 15th. To me i have tried all the apps in the market related to voice commands etc all work a few steps and then make u feel dumb sayingthe same thing over and over again

Try asking speaktoit assistant "what's the time" more that once

[Karthik R 246]

Google nabbed Clever Sense this week as an answer to Siri. Clever Sense developed Alfred, an app the company has designated as "your personal robot." And while you can't speak to Alfred like you can with Siri, the app provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, coffee shops and clubs based on your preferences, location, and other factors, eventually "learning" what you like over time.

Read more here.

[rajanmehta 4,056]

More info on Google’s Majel, Moving a Little Faster Towards That Star Trek Future

Source Taylor Wimberly

Now some more tips are starting to come in. We compared Majel to Apple’s Siri voice assistant because that’s how it was described to us, but the project could be much larger than we initially imagined. Read on for new details and some interesting quotes from Google employees.

First we had a tip from “Ted,” who described his experience with an early release of Majel on an Android tablet. Even though this tip was sent from an anonymous IP, we believe it to be accurate since it matched an earlier description we received.

Ted wrote: “It’s definitely as good, or better, than Siri. At least on the tablet you can sort through different answers with these swipe-able trays. Like, if you say “show me the Statue of Liberty” it’ll automatically take you to Google Image results, but another tray beneath it might be its location on Google Maps and then another tray might have a Wikipedia page. It’s also pretty good at giving you succinct answers if you ask it a question. The UI is definitely more powerful than Siri’s, even if a little harder to navigate.

At least at one phase of the development you would activate it by saying “Computer…” It was hard not to use a Jean Luc Piccard accent when doing it!”

As you can see, the first release of Majel might be rather simple and focus solely on natural language questions with answers from Google Search.

Next up we have some comments posted to Reddit from an ex-employee of Google who claims to have worked at the secret Google X Lab.

The anonymous Googler wrote: “This is in total violation of the NDA, but I don’t care anymore. Sue me.

The central focus of Google X for the past few years has been a highly advanced artificial intelligence robot that leverages the underlying technology of many popular Google programs. As of October (the last time I was around the project), the artificial intelligence had passed the Turing Test 93% of the time via an hour long IM style conversation. IM was chosen to isolate the AI from the speech synthesizer and physical packaging of the robot.

The robot itself isn’t particularly advanced because the focus was not on mechanics, but rather the software. It is basically a robotish looking thing on wheels. Speech recognition is somewhat better than what you would get with normal speech input, mostly because of the use of high quality microphones and lip-reading assistance.

I have had the chance to interact with the robot personally and it is honestly the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. I like to think of it like Stephen Hawking because it is extremely smart and you can interact with it naturally, but it is incapable of physically doing much. There is a planned phase two for development of an advanced robotics platform.“

This sounds more along the lines of the shoot-for-the-stars ideas that the NYTimes described when they wrote about Google X. Obviously, Google has been working on artificial intelligence for many years. Moving along, we return to some comments from Mike Cohen, Google’s Manager of Speech Technology and co-founder of Nuance Communications (the company that powers some of the technology behind Siri).

Mike Cohen wrote: “In Star Trek, they don’t spend a lot of time typing things on keyboards—they just speak to their computers, and the computers speak back. It’s a more natural way to communicate, but getting there requires chipping away at a range of hard research problems.

We’ve recently made some strides with speech technologies and tools that take voice input. But what about when the computer speaks to you—in other words, voice output?

That’s why we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired Phonetic Arts, a speech synthesis company based in Cambridge, England. Phonetic Arts’ team of researchers and engineers work at the cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice.

We are excited about their technology, and while we don’t have plans to share yet, we’re confident that together we’ll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future.”

Keeping with the Star Trek theme, we have more comments from Google’s Amit Singhal found in The Evolution of search video posted in November.

Finally, we have the comments of Matias Duarte, the computer-interface designer and user-experience lead for Android, from an interview with The Daily Beast.

Matias Duarte said: “Voice is absolutely going to be an essential part of user interfaces. I mean Google and Android have been working on Voice for years. Even in Ice Cream Sandwich we released significant improvements to the way Voice dication works. What I think is going to be interesting about Voice is trying to treat Voice as something that is universally accessible in every application and not confine it to just a gimmick or something you only use when you are in the car or on the go.

I really want computers to be multimodal. When you watch a science fiction show like Star Trek, someone walks up to a wall and starts touching things and speaking to a computer at the same time. That’s the way that I think our interfaces need to evolve. You need to be able to start using email, touching things on screen, speak to it, touch more things, and not really have to think about ‘am I using Voice now or not using Voice.’ You just use the computer input that is most natural at that time.”

That sounds a little more advanced than how we described the first release of Majel, but Matias said they were already working on the user interface for the next version of Android, codenamed Jelly Bean, and the next version after that.

We’re just in the early stages of comprehending how large a project Majel has become, but we still expect some kind of release on Android devices early next year. Google engineers are already testing a version of Majel that might be released as an upgrade to Google’s Voice Actions application, but we fully expect it will be a core part of Android’s next major release.

[shadow 119]

awesome video :-) someday i hope google will be able to provide search results for our thoughts :-) directly from our brain :-) ,, and still people will be looking for answers to even more complex questions :-D

[phonegeek 588]

Yeh to siri ki band baja dega.....:-P

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

[shadow 119]

why us android users have to compare everything with ios ? i simply dont get it ,, we belong to different OS and they belong to diff OS

[abhi.r 95]

You already answered your question. They both are compared because they belong to different OS and are real competitors when it comes to smartphones.

Rest symbian, bada, blackberry os are no where near competition. Don't know much about new windows mobile. Experts here will shed more light on it.

My question: why every thread turns into iOS vs Android?

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

[aalok 442]

iOS & Android : donoon ka choli daaman ka saath hai..

[Honest 836]

^^^

Toh bhai Majel ke sath maje-le-lo.....lolz.

Thanks Rajan Babu for the info. +1

[rajanmehta 4,056]

why us android users have to compare everything with ios ? i simply dont get it ,, we belong to different OS and they belong to diff OS

Problem is not with comparison. Issue is with Fanboyism. Most of the time followers of either OS just attack another without much of an informed idea about what the other OS actually is. (Myself included in that category)

I have come across this excellent piece of info which gives detailed idea about evolution of both iOS and Android. Must read for informed choices and debate.

iOS: A visual history >> http://www.theverge....ory-iphone-ipad

Android: A visual history >> http://www.theverge....android-history