Iris is an app for Android that stands for ‘Intelligent Rival Imitator of Siri.’ As the title says, this is basically an Android application inspired by iOS’s Siri. After using iris for a couple of minutes, you can definitely see that it is in its alpha stage. From the questions I asked it, I noticed that it is mostly meant to learn facts taken from the internet, as well as clever responses when asked questions like “do you want to go drink with me tonight,” and iris politely responded “Yes I do.” It was difficult to find questions it would answer like that, a la Siri, because it mostly just searches the internet for answers. A good example was when I asked iris if it would marry me, it responded “Will You Marry Me? is the 1992 single by Paula Abdul.”

 

I also noticed it cannot access your location at the moment, so if you want it to find you a good restaurant or coffee place, you’re out of luck for now. It is important to keep in mind that it is in alpha, so if you want to give it a whirl, don’t expect everything you see your fellow iPhone 4S users enjoying. Yet. The developers are constantly working on it to make it better, and the first version came out just 8 hours after they started writing the code for it. It has come a long way since then, but still obviously has its limits. When you download it, you will also need to download Android Text-to-Speech synthesis if you haven’t already. If you haven’t, it will automatically take you to the market so you can install it. If you get a chance to check it out, let me know what you think below!

 

Picture Source: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dexetra.iris