“Hey Siri”

“Xiao Ai’s classmate”

“Xiao Yi Xiao Yi”

…

< p> Although today, voice assistants still cannot escape the daily teasing, but we have also become accustomed to calling Siri privately to do simple things such as setting alarm clocks or checking the weather. However, when calling Siri or "Little X", have you ever wondered: Where did these names come from?

Siri, which debuted on the iPhone 4S in 2011, is undoubtedly the leader of this voice assistant trend, and its related information is also very detailed, so our exploration of the naming of voice assistants will start with Siri.

Strictly speaking, Siri is not 100% "made by Apple". It first appeared in the App Store in the form of an application. Its name comes from the daughter of its developer Kittalaus's former colleague, which is Norwegian. , "siri" means "the beauty who leads you to victory"; in Swahili, "siri" means "secret"; in Sinhala, "siri" means "beauty". Kittalaus liked the name so much that he even planned to name his daughter Siri, but instead he gave birth to a son, so he had to make up for it with his own products.

After being launched on the App Store in 2010, Siri quickly attracted the attention of Apple. Only three weeks later, Kittalaus received a call from Jobs, and then he flew to Jobs’ home in Cupertino to meet with him. The other party talked for a full 3 hours. In April of the same year, Apple acquired Siri for $200 million.

When he chose to name his speech recognition technology and company after Siri, Kittalaus thought the name was "easy to write and easy to pronounce." Many people also believe that Siri's success is largely due to its good name. Surprisingly, Jobs didn't like the name at first. One of the main problems was that the pronunciation of Siri "Shiri" in Japanese means "butt".

However, Apple scratched its head from top to bottom and could not come up with a better name. As stubborn as Jobs was, he could only compromise. But now it seems that Kittalaus's solidity is not wrong. This simple and catchy name has become synonymous with voice assistants and a benchmark for other companies to try to surpass.

Microsoft's Cortana has very different origins.

Its name comes from an artificial intelligence called Cortana in Microsoft's well-known game "Halo". This is a female character who was initially set to help humans, but was eventually discovered to have Evil tendencies. When Microsoft started developing a voice assistant to rival Siri, it used Cortana as the project codename. Unexpectedly, after the name was leaked, it became extremely popular among developers and users. At their strong request, Microsoft finally agreed to use Cortana as its project codename. The official name of the voice assistant.

However, naming a voice assistant after an evil AI character always feels wrong.

Alexa was inspired by the voice and conversation system in Star Trek, and Amazon's developers wanted it to be as knowledgeable and available as the computer in the novel. By the way, Amazon founder Bezos is a die-hard Star Trek fan.

But unlike Apple and Microsoft, which randomly name their voice assistants, Amazon’s Alexa was named after a long period of scientific testing. The x surrounded by soft vowels is highly recognizable and easier to identify. recognized by the machine. Developers also felt that Alexa’s name was reminiscent of the famous Library of Alexandria, giving the impression of being knowledgeable.

As mentioned earlier, the "x" in the middle of Alexa can make the name more accurately recognized by the machine, but Bixby, which also has the "x" in the middle, has become the most difficult to pronounce voice assistant in history. one.

"x" in Bixby is pronounced as a "consonant combination" of "k" and "s". This pronunciation is difficult for people in many regions, even in South Korea, the home base of Samsung. Get used to this way of pronunciation. What's even worse is that "x" is followed by a "b", forming a combination of three consonants (k, s, b), making it even more difficult.

Like Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby also came from an external acquisition, and the acquisition price was also more than 200 million US dollars. Coincidentally, the head of the acquired Viv Lab in California, USA, also participated in the development of Siri. . But why it gave its voice assistant such a confusing name? Samsung has never given an answer.

Compared with its competitors, Google’s naming of its voice assistant is too arbitrary. Google Assistant is too straightforward to have a name.

Xiaodu

After talking about foreign voice assistants, let’s take a look at the naming of domestic manufacturers. Earlier we complained about Google's careless naming of its voice assistant. Their Chinese counterpart Baidu (sorry I shouldn't compare the two) is not much better. The name of "Xiaodu" is also straightforward. If there is any advantage, , probably just shorter and easier to read than Google Assistant.

Xiao Ai Classmate

Xiaomi’s voice assistant “Xiao Ai Classmate” is a well-known voice assistant in China, but this seemingly simple name has also gone through half a year. test. Xiaomi Design Director Nandil once wrote an article detailing the origin of Xiao Ai’s name.

The R&D staff initially used a name that they thought was in line with Xiaomi’s temperament and friendly: “Xiaomi Nana”. However, due to the pronunciation and recognition problems of overlapping words, its awakening rate was not ideal and there were many problems. The problem of false wake-up.

Taking recognition into account, the R&D personnel finally decided on the name of the voice assistant as four characters. From the perspective of ease of memory, the format was determined as: name + title, and finally locked on "Xiao Ai Classmate" ".

According to Xiaomi, the pinyin of the word "love" "AI" is the English abbreviation of artificial intelligence. The word "little love" appears less frequently in daily conversations, which also solves the problem of false awakening. , "Classmate" is a title that everyone has had, which is kind and appropriate. At the same time, it represents that Xiaomi's artificial intelligence is also constantly learning and growing.

In addition to Xiaoai and Xiaodu, I found that other domestic manufacturers also prefer "小" when naming their voice assistants, such as:

We believe that these seemingly Behind the ordinary name, there is a process of repeated deliberation similar to that of Xiaoai. Unfortunately, except for Xiaoai, other domestic manufacturers are too low-key and rarely reveal the reason for the naming of their voice assistants. For example, Huawei's Xiaoyi, the only thing we can know is that Xiaoyi's English name is Celia, but the origin of this English name is as untestable as its Chinese name. However, if you want, you can also change Xiaoyi to "Xiao Ai" , "Siri", domestic companies still play it.