It was a story of two vocal assistants.
Amazon and Apple showed during Thursday winning calls how far they are in the race to build a smarter AI assistant.
Apple CEO, Tim Cook, tackled Siri’s highly anticipated upgraded upgrade, announced for the first time almost a year ago as part of Apple Intelligence.
“We need more time to finish our work on these features so that they meet our high quality bar,” Cook told analysts, adding: “It’s just a little more time than we thought”.
Cook did not give a specific calendar to publish its more personal and conscious version of Siri, but Apple declared in March that it expected it in “the coming year”.
While Cook asked questions about delays, Amazon Andy Jassy CEO focused on deployment. Alexa +, the reworked vocal assistant from the company powered by a generative AI, has already reached more than 100,000 paid users since its launch in February, he said when calling on Thursday.
“People really love Alexa + so far,” said Jassy. “We have many more features that we plan to add in the coming months.”
Alexa + includes features fueled by AI such as the provision of dinner recipes, SMS to friends and family and the sending of party invitations, Panos Panay, main vice-president of Amazon aircraft and services, said the launch event in February.
The two companies were the first movers on the vocal assistant market. Apple, who introduced Siri in 2011, rushed to catch up in a race in which he was one step ahead.
Alexa + also faced hold-ups. It is lacking in Demo key features when launching, in particular the integration of third -party applications, the bedtime stories generated by AI and suggestions for gift ideas.
In March, Apple took the rare stage of delay in the deployment of its improved SIRI, which should be powered by large language models. It was announced for the first time at its June 2024 WWDC event.
The new SIRI features – including awareness of the screen, the personal context and the deeper integration of applications – were originally expected with iOS 18.4, which was published on March 31. Now, they are not recommended by Apple observers to land with iOS 19, which could arrive this fall.
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