Google’s Pixel phones are the first phones to come with Google Assistant, a virtual assistant built with machine learning and AI at its core. Google Assistant is basically the company’s next-generation of Google Now with an enhancement to how it can understand and conduct conversations with humans.
YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) has released a new video which compares the Google Assistant running on a Pixel XL with the latest version of Siri running on an iPhone 7 Plus.
In the video, Brownlee puts both assistants side-by-side and gives them a series of questions and commands, testing how each device responds. It is very clear in the video that Siri is typically much better at representing the result visually and is slightly faster at providing responses for simple queries.
However, when it comes to a conversation aspect, Google Assistant clearly wins. For example, after getting a response from both assistants telling Brownlee who the president of the United States is, the YouTuber asked ‘how tall is he?’ Google Assistant clearly figured out that ‘he’ referred to the president of the United States and provided the correct answer. However, Siri interpreted the question as ‘how tall is the United States?’ The ability of Google Assistant to carry out a contextual conversation is much greater than Siri.
In another test, Brownlee asked whether the Los Angeles Clippers won. Siri responded with the most recent score from their pre-season game, while Google Assistant listed a game from last season.
Both Apple and Google have been improving their virtual assistants at an incredible rate. With the constant innovation in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning, virtual assistants will only continue to become smarter and more human-like.
