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“There were many conversations within the team about whether it should be gender neutral” or “should have an ‘attitude,’ ” said Mr. Winarsky, who didn’t go to Apple, and still works at SRI. The result, before the software was bought by Apple, was “occasionally a light attitude,” he said.
When Apple began integrating Siri into the iPhone, the team focused on keeping its personality friendly and humble—but also with an edge, according to a person who worked at Apple on the project. As Apple’s engineers worked on the software, they were often thinking, “How would we want a person to respond?” this person said.
The Siri group, one of the largest software teams at Apple, fine-tuned Siri’s responses in an attempt to forge an emotional tie with its customers. To that end, Siri regularly uses a customer’s nickname in responses, as well as those of other important people and places in his or her life. “We thought of it almost as a person on the phone,” this person said.
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Ask the iPhone to “Open the pod bay doors”—a reference to the movie “2001”—and some users say it answers back in a frighteningly slow voice, reminiscent of HAL 9000, the computer that leaves an astronaut to die in space. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” says Siri.
Sometimes she punctuates that answer with, “We intelligent agents will never live that down, apparently.”
This is why Siri will work. Trying to get people to give voice commands naturally to an object feels weird, silly, embarrassing, and against all of our learned behavior.
Personify the AI service, and it just feels less awkward. And more fun.
(via WSJ)
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