Siri leads voice assistants in language support

 

today I read an article ( you can find it below ),  saying buddy SIRI is a leader in language support among other competitors.

I was kind of sceptical of that article report. and like always before I even finish reading. I pressed my home button and asked SIRI;” what language do you speak “

Siri replied, and there was a ‘ siri settings ‘  below its answer ( as you can see above )

it was like SIRI itself is asking me if I had the necessary courage to change the language. I had to do it! , so I hit ‘ siri settings ‘  change SIRI to chinese( mandarin – Taiwan )

and then …. BOOMZZzz

I threw Siri a couple of questions, a reply was just as fast as if Siri was speaking in English.  and I only had to ask ONCE for my questions!

I’m impressed! MOST IMPRESSIVE!

so for those who had always wanted to change siri to your mother tongue language, the time has come to do so.

I cant wait for Siri to speak Hokkien ! Hahahahaaaa …

 

 

 

ARTICLE – 

Siri leads voice assistants in language support

 

While many AI researchers suggest that Siri is lagging behind competitors such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, one area in which Apple’s voice assistant clearly has the lead over its competitors is in its extremely wide language support. A new report from Reuters notes that Siri can speak and understand 21 different languages, with localized dialect support for over 36 countries in total. By comparison, Microsoft Cortana supports only eight languages for 13 countries, Google’s Assistant speaks four, and Amazon’s Alexa is limited to only English and German. Reuters also notes that Siri will also be adding support for Shanghainese, a special dialect of Wu Chinese spoken only around Shanghai.

Alex Acero, the head of Apple’s speech team for Siri, explained to Reuters the process Apple uses in adding new language support to Siri. Acero notes that they begin by bringing in people to read passages in a range of accents and dialects, and then transcribe those passages by hand to provide an exact representation that the system can compare to and learn from. A range of sounds and variety of voices is used to improve recognition quality, and then a language model is built to try and predict typical word sequences. Apple then deploys “dictation mode” to capture a small percentage of anonymized audio recordings, complete with background noise and mumbled words, which are transcribed by humans, resulting in about a 50 percent reduction in the rate of errors in speech recognition. One sufficient data has been gathered, Apple records a voice actor to speak for Siri in the new language, and then releases the new language with a list of answers to what Apple expects to be the most common questions. Siri then learns during real-world use about what users ask, and Apple tweaks Siri on an ongoing basis to refine the process and improve the quality of speech recognition and answers, pushing out updates about every two weeks.

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Apple Expands Mobile Phone Billing to Singapore

 

Apple has expanded its mobile phone billing service to Austria, Italy, and Singapore.

Mobile phone billing lets you pay for your iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store purchases and your Apple Music membership on your cell phone bill.

Here’s how to use it:

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
● Open the iTunes Store or App Store app.
● Scroll down the bottom of the screen and tap your Apple ID.
● Tap View Apple ID. You might need to sign in.
● Tap Payment Information.
● Under the list of payment options, select Mobile Phone.
● If the phone you’re using is the one connected to the carrier plan that you want to bill to, select “Use This Mobile Number.” Then tap next.
● If you don’t see “Use This Mobile Number” or you want to use a different number, tap “Use a Different Mobile Number,” then continue with the steps in the next section. If you’re not using iOS 8.4 or later, you’ll need to enter your mobile phone number manually.
● Apple will use the mobile number of the iPhone you’re on to check with your carrier and confirm that you can be signed up for mobile phone billing. You might see a screen that says “Verifying” while this happens.

Other countries that support mobile phone billing include: Belgium, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.

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