I spent thirty minutes with Siri and the interaction wasn’t natural. As someone who owns multiple Apple products, I would say that I really don’t use Siri that often. I only find myself using Siri when I have to set a timer to remind me to take the laundry out of the washing machine or to give myself ten extra minutes in bed. Essentially, I just use Siri when I don’t want to bother to unlock my phone and do the same commands that I would have told Siri to do.
A couple of years ago there was a lot of talk about how Siri’s voice sounds robotic and unnatural. In September 2017, Apple released IOS 11 which introduced Siri’s new voice and made Siri “sound more human”.
“Siri now takes more pauses in sentences, elongates syllables right before a pause, and the speech lilts up and down as it speaks. The words sound more fluid and Siri speaks more languages, too. It’s nicer to listen to, and to talk to.” — WIRED, How Apple Finally Made Siri Sound More Human
There is no doubt that Siri sounds like a human but my interaction with Siri felt very one-way in some aspects. When I asked Siri a question and followed up to the question I just asked, Siri, treated it as a new question and was confused about what I was asking. If you were talking to a human they would understand if the next question/statement you said was referencing the previous question/statement you said. For example, I asked Siri “What is the capital of Venezuela?” Siri answered my question and then when I asked my follow up the previous question “Why is that?” to possibly get a history on the capital Siri answered “Interesting Question”. I noticed that whenever I asked questions like this Siri’s answer would be the same. I simply came to the conclusion that Siri doesn’t keep track of what you said before to generate the next answer so If you want to ask more questions then make sure to rephrase the question to add on your followup question.
When I was thinking about questions to ask Siri, I would sometimes pause in the middle of a question and then Siri assumes that I am done talking after 3 seconds. When Siri assumes that I am done talking, it doesn’t understand what I am trying to say and then I would have to repeat my question over again without pauses. When talking to someone and they pause in the middle of their question as a human you know that they are not done asking their question but with Siri, it is programmed to hear a continuous flow of thought and when it doesn’t hear you speak for a few seconds it assumes that you are done talking. This doesn’t seem to be practical input for everyone, Apple assumes that everyone can talk continuously without pausing when speaking which might deter some users from engaging with Siri. It would honestly take less time to search up the question yourself on Google and get the results instead of having to repeat yourself.
While using Siri, I felt that Siri was a personal assistant that was just there to provide you with the answers you needed and not to engage with you in conversation. Although Siri has a natural-sounding voice that is not enough to make up how unnatural the interaction is.
