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Apple Wants Siri to be Your New Receptionist

posted by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the talking-to-strangers dept.

fliptop writes:

Apple is testing a service that will let Siri answer, record and transcribe your calls:

Apple's iCloud service will then send you the text of the transcribed voicemail — meaning that you'll never need to listen to your voicemails again.

[...] Here is how it works: When someone using iCloud Voicemail is unable to take a call, Siri will answer instead of letting the call go to a standard digital audio recorder.

iCloud Voicemail can relay information about where you are and why you can't pick up the phone to certain people. But the coolest feature of the service is that Siri will transcribe any incoming voicemails, just like it does with anything else you say to it.

Since they're replicating a service that carriers already provide, could this be another indication Apple is looking to become its own cellular carrier?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by spxero on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM

    by spxero (3061) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM (#217906)

    I've used Google voice for quite some time now, and I can't think of one voicemail that read the same as the audio message itself. Some are bad enough they can't be transcribed. There are quite a few that have enough context clues in the transcription to give an idea of what's going on, but it's far from 100%, or even 75% for that matter.

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  • (Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:38PM

    by iwoloschin (3863) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:38PM (#217926)

    It's never 100% correct, but it's often close enough to get the idea, or to know it's a spam voicemail that I can safely delete. I don't need my visual voicemail to be entirely accurate, just close enough so that I know what action I need to take.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by scruffybeard on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:46PM

    by scruffybeard (533) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:46PM (#217931)

    My experience has been much closer to the 75-85% mark, especially if you learn to read the messages phonetically. Perhaps I am not a typical user, but I am just looking for the gist of what the person wants, and determine how quickly I need to respond. Since I don't bring my phone to work, having the messages transcribed, and emailed is an added bonus.

    The question in my mind is what took Apple so long? This is functionality that has been available for a few years now. Am I missing something?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:12PM (#217965)

    Ever have to replay a voice-mail in order to figure out what the caller actually said?

    That's your own ears making a transcription error. You are just used to dealing with it so it is unremarkable to you.