I’m sure you are quite aware that the big deal with the iPhone 4S is the Siri voice assistant, and no doubt the Android faithful would love something along the lines of Siri for the Android platform albeit a couple of apps already available, but what about one straight from the Google guys?
Well it appears that Android just might get their own Siri style voice assistant sometime in the future, as according to the guys over on Apple Insider by way of Android and Me, the word is the Google guys are doing just that.
Apparently Google is working on a voice recognition virtual assistant for the Android platform, and it has a codename of ‘Majel,’ apparently in honour of the late Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, wife of the creator of Star Trek and also stared in several Star Trek episodes as Nurse Christine Chaple, the first office in the pilot episode, Lwaxana Trio in STTNG, and was also the voice of the Federation computer, and as a Star Trek fan I think it would be a very fitting tribute indeed.
The word is the new voice assistant will be an ‘evolution’ of the current voice actions feature in Android but will add ‘natural language processing’ along the lines of rival Siri. However apparently at initial launch, Majel will only be for Google Search queries.
Apparently engineers at Google X lab are working round the clock to get Majel up and running and ready for release, while more advanced feature such as app and actions control will be added later.
So there you have it, at some point in the not too distant future hopefully, Android should get its own Siri-like voice assistant albeit a bit limited at first. I wonder if they will do the editing thing to actually use Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s voice for the actual assistant?
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