Nuance Communications no relation Apple Inc.
Development
Siri is a spin-out from the SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center and is an offshoot of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA)-funded CALO project. SRI International used the NABC Framework to define the value proposition for Siri. It was co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Tom Gruber, and UCLA alumnus Adam Cheyer. Kittlaus named Siri after a co-worker in Norway; the name is a short form of the name Sigrid, from Old Norse Sigríðr, composed of the elements sigr "victory" and fríðr "beautiful".Siri's speech recognition engine was provided by Nuance Communications, a speech technology company. Neither Apple nor Nuance acknowledged this for years, until Nuance CEO Paul Ricci confirmed it at a 2013 technology conference. The speech recognition system uses sophisticated machine learning techniques, including convolutional neural networks and long short-term memory.The initial Siri prototype was implemented using the Active platform, a joint project between the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International and the Vrai Group at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The Active platform was the focus of a Ph.D. thesis led by Didier Guzzoni, who joined Siri as its chief scientist.Siri was acquired by Apple Inc. in April 2010 under the direction of Steve Jobs. Apple's first notion of a digital personal assistant appeared in a 1987 concept video, Knowledge Navigator.