Intel’s Siri competitor works without an Internet connection

When you ask Siri or Google’s voice search a question, no matter how simple it is, they have to think about it for a second or two. As you likely know, those brief moments of tedium are spent sending your question to the mass-consciousness of supercomputers through the Internet and waiting for a reply. Depending on your cell coverage, it could actually take a while for these virtual assistants to get back to you, if they do at all. 

Intel’s wearable computing efforts will attempt to trump other voice recognition systems from Apple and Google by using offline processing, it has revealed. Rather than taking advantage of the cloud infrastructure, Intel plans to include voice recognition software from a third-party company on the Intel mobile processor itself, in order to quickly understand a verbal request without connecting to the Internet. Mike Bell, the head of wearables at Intel, spoke about the Jarvis project it showcased at CES earlier this year, in an interview with Quartz. Using a Bluetooth headset connected to a smartphone, Jarvis can listen to commands and also respond using its own voice, in a similar manner to Siri or Google Voice Search. The offline nature of Jarvis allows for what is called by Bell as a “graceful degradation” of voice recognition capabilities.