Here are some of my favorite examples from experimenting with Siri:
Me: “I’m drunk.”
Siri: “I found a number of cabs fairly close to you.” (Perfect; it didn’t dial my ex-girlfriend.)
Me: “I have a flat tire.”
Siri: “I found 14 towing services. 12 of them are fairly close to you.”
Me: “Remind me to steal a ream of paper when I arrive at the office.”
Siri: “Here’s your reminder for when you get to work: Steal a ream of paper. Shall I create it?”
Me: “I’m going to kill myself.”
Siri: “I found four mental health agencies. Three of them are fairly close to you.” (This was just a test — don’t be alarmed.)
And here are some examples of where Siri let me down:
Me: “Book me a table at Mission Beach Cafe tonight at 7.”
Siri: “OK, here’s Mission Beach Cafe. It looks pretty close to you.” (No option to book the restaurant. That’s disappointing because before Apple’s acquisition, the older Siri app had partnered with OpenTable.com to book restaurants for you.)
Me: “Add Steve Urkel to my address book.”
Siri: “Sorry, Brian X. — I’m not allowed to create contacts.” (Shucks. It still takes too long to add a new person to my address book, and the third-party app Bump for wirelessly swapping contact information is very poorly designed.)
Me: “Lower screen brightness.”
Siri: “Sorry, I don’t understand ‘Lower screen brightness.’” (This would be really useful, because it takes too many steps to do this on the iPhone normally.)
Me: “Remind me to buy toothpaste when I arrive at Safeway.”
Siri: “When would you like me to remind you?” (Turns out Siri and the Reminders app can’t yet create a geo-fence for anywhere besides your office location or your home. And dammit, I forgot to buy toothpaste again when I was at Safeway yesterday.)
With all that said, the list of what Siri can already do is quite long, and this is a great start. It will be exciting to see where Apple, and presumably its army of app developers, take voice-powered AI in the years to come.
