Today on Twitter [I’ve always wanted to start a column like that] Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) surmised that Apple Computer has acquired Siri. As evidence, he points to the April 27 link on the U.S. Federal Trade Commissions “Hart Scott Rodino” Web page. On it, both Apple Computer and Siri have been granted “early termination” of any waiting period associated with anti-trust concerns. Ergo: they must be merging.

Siri has already proven to be a popular application for iPhone, and has been deemed even better for the iPad where, with closer ties to the parent company’s internal labs, it would help define Apple’s tablet as the ultimate personal assistant. The founders of Siri had already been instrumental in bringing millions of dollars (and person months) invested at SRI’s Artificial Intelligence Center in the CALO/PAL project (where the word pal refers to a “Personal Assistant that Learns). It was the largest and singularly most ambitious project to apply artificial intelligence to solve everyday, recurring problems.

By buying Siri and hiring the core staff, which includes founders Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. Cheyer served as program director for CALO. Kittlaus applied his extensive experience in mobile services at Telenor, Motorola and Screen3. Gruber’s insights into the practical application of artificial intelligence has been an important factor in shaping the services of LinkedIn, SocialText and PowerSet.

There is no confirmation from either Siri or Apple that the acquisition is pending. Yet the prospects for embedding a “personal assistant that learns” across Apple’s entire “iLine” (iPod, iPad and iPhone) as well as its line of PCs and cloud-based services (meaning the iTunes Store, etc.) is enticing. When we first wrote up Siri in February we noted that it had forged relationships with Web sites that put an emphasis on “results”: Fandango for movie ticket buying or Open Table to book a table at a restaurant. The company’s revenue plan was to take a percentage of the transactions it supports. Clearly, it would take a while for a small company like Siri to build the subscriber base and transaction flow to make its revenue plans “lucrative.”

As part of Apple the company will find that it has a longer time to build up the revenue stream while, at the same time, it will be easier to scale the business using Apple’s existing resources. Clearly a win/win.

And let’s not forget that it is also a coup for Nuance Communications, which provides the voice recognition resources for Siri as well as for the “native” Voice Command apps on the iPhone. Congratulations to all.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Apple, mobile speech, Recombinant Communications, Artificial Intelligence