Apple hopes firm it acquired last year will take Siri to the next level

Microsoft's unveiling of its own virtual personal assistant apparently has Apple working on ways to bring Siri to the next level. To help them with this task, Apple has turned to speech recognition firm Novauris Technologies. The latter was formed from the U.K. research arm of Dragon Systems, and Apple purchased the firm last year, although it never was announced.

Apple has turned to its acquisition to improve Siri's speech recognition. Novauris has been working on large vocabulary automatic speech recognition, to help snag information stored in a mobile device. Novauris Technology's products can search a phone's contacts list, apps, music, and navigation. It can also search inside the App Store for a specific app.

There already is a connection between Novauris and Siri. When Siri launched with the Apple iPhone 4s in 2011, it was powered by Nuance, which purchased Dragon. And as we said earlier, Novauris' staff came from Dragon's U.K. research arm. Now, Apple is hoping that Siri can be re-energized to not only take on Google Now, but also Cortana.

source: TechCrunch