Apple acquired Siri, a company built around voice recognition and personal assistant software for mobile devices, just last year. Yesterday Apple explained what it exactly plans to do with Siri’s software. Not surprisingly, the consumer electronics company has added voice recognition and commands to the incoming iPhone 4S.
Apple’s Scott Forstall showed off the new feature by demonstrating how you can ask the phone questions and receive answers thanks to exclusive Wikipedia integration.
For example:
- You can have Siri read your text messages or notifications to you.
- You can ask for a weather forecast.
- Ask for nearby restaurant listings.
- Get word definitions.
- Ask how many days there are until Christmas.
The company also showed off a new voice input feature that lets you enter text on your device by hitting a microphone icon on the keyboard — much the way you already can with most Android devices.
The voice recognition software, which will initially launch in beta, will be available English, French and German.