Star Trek diehard fans might soon find new reasons to love Android, as Google is rumoured to present soon a Siri contender nicknamed Majel. The name is inspired by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, better known as the voice of the Federation Computer from Star Trek. Details news below.
Google already has basic Voice Actions available on Android smartphones but Majel is believed to introduce technology allowing natural voice processing. Also, it wouldn’t be Google if the new product wouldn’t include search queries making the best out of massive potential of the best Internet search provider.
Matias Duarte, Director of Android OS User Experience, hinted to the new voice technology in an interview to Slashgear “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.”
Duarte spoke with high regard about the competitor’s digital assistant Siri and the voice recognition technology behind it, but he also believed that giving an artificial personality to a device could be a too challenging approach. With the same occasion, his colleague Hugo Barra, Product Management Director for Android, pointed out that the new product will be released as soon as possible but with only in English, as the voice recognition technology needs time to grow and to “learn” from users. Siri also faced this issue and even it is one of the most talked about features integrated in a smartphone, it is still in beta stage.
Reportedly, Google X teams are working frantically on this project and New York Times even suggested that we’ll see the new feature by the end of this year. Given that the New Year is just two weeks ahead so it would be safe to assume that Majel will be introduced on the market on January or even February.
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Looking promising stuff from Android. If they challenged Siri with this, it would be their major success. I still believe on Siri. Its outstanding. Hope techno-lovers get something new.