What is Siri?

All about iPhone 4S App Siri

Siri is a virtual personal assistant for iPhone 4s. Siri helps us accomplish everyday tasks like making restaurant reservations, buying movie tickets, or calling a taxi with incredible ease.

Users simply speak to their phones and, just like a real assistant, Siri understands what is said, and executes subsequent actions, adapting to users' individual preferences over time. The result is a tailored, concierge-like experience.

Siri's History

Siri project was started by SRI ( Stanford Research Institute) International in July 2003 when DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) selected SRI to lead the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) Program. PAL program (the Personalized Assistant that Learns) focused on improving the way that computers support humans through the use of cognitive systems—that is, systems that reason, learn from experience, and accept guidance in order to provide effective, personalized assistance.It was awarded $22M and given over five years to develop software, dubbed CALO, that could revolutionize how computers support military and other decision-makers. It is considered to be the largest artificial intelligence project in history.

PAL Framework developed is now available in many of the successful machine learning and reasoning technologies for research, and military communities.

Technical capabilities within the framework have been hardened, modularized, packaged, and where appropriate, adapted to meet industry standards .The framework includes various infrastructure components and APIs to simplify integration with the framework technologies.

In 2007 Siri, Inc was created to bring the virtual personalized assistant technology to consumers. The company is founded by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), and Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRIl Ventures.

What is siri?

By 2008 Siri had raised an staggering $8.5 million in a financing round, led by Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.In 2009 Siri raised another $15.5 million with the help Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.

On February 5 , 2010 Siri was launched as virtual personal assistant for iPhone 3GS. Siri was available as an app Siri was available in the App Store for free for iPhone 3GS until April 2010 when Apple acquired Siri for an undisclosed sum.