Apple looks to be amping up Siri with hiring binge
The software giant posts several job openings to work with its speech recognition personal assistant that will "help build out new areas of expertise for Siri."
Siri could be getting a lot better at her job.
Apple posted 12 new Siri-focused jobs over the weekend, according to Fast Company. The open positions include software engineers, operations engineers, and interaction designer. This means that Apple's speech recognition personal assistant may be getting an overhaul.
The job description for Siri software engineers says, "The Siri team is looking for an exceptional engineer to help build out new areas of expertise for Siri, expanding the product's capabilities for millions of users," while the description for Siri interaction designer says, "The successful candidate will contribute to extending Siri's capabilities, knowledge, and intelligence, helping invent new techniques for conversational interaction, and building practices, processes, and standards that will become a foundation for design and innovation far into the future."
Apple purchased Siri in early 2010. At the time, the company had a voice assistant app that could turn voice commands into software actions. After purchasing the company, Apple spun it into an exclusive feature for the
Despite Siri getting some flack over lack of efficacy, Apple has stated publicly that it has high hopes for its speech recognition personal assistant. In a talk last year, Apple's CEO Tim Cook noted that the product was still in beta, but that he already felt like he couldn't live without it. He then compared it to the kind of user interface changes the company underwent when going to multitouch trackpads on its
Last September, one of Siri's founding members Adam Cheyer left the company. He was the second Siri co-founder to leave Apple after joining the company post-acquisition. Shortly after the debut of Siri on the iPhone 4S, Siri co-founder and CEO Dag Kittlaus left the company as well.