Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle natural language queries on a smartphone. Today the pair showed off their newest creation, Viv, a next generation AI assistant that they have been developing in stealth mode for the last four years. The goal was to create a better version of Siri, one that connected to a multitude of services, instead of routinely shuffling queries off to a basic web search. During a 20-minute demo onstage at Disrupt NYC, Viv flawlessly handled a number of complex requests, not just in terms of comprehension, but by connecting with third-party merchants to purchase goods and book reservations. Viv's approach is much closer to Amazon's Alexa or Facebook's Messenger bots, offering the ability to connect with third-party merchants and vendors so that it can execute on requests to purchase goods or book reservations.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, who created the software behind Apple's Siri, have spent the last four years building a new digital assistant: Viv. At TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday, Kittlaus finally demonstrated Viv to the public -- and it makes Siri look antiquated in comparison. Let's first get one thing out of the way: Siri is pretty awful to use. Much of the time, asking Siri to do anything feels like you're just speaking into a Google search. It only has a few functions it can do well, and feels closed.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri and yesterday they showed off their new AI: Viv, a digital assistant they've been developing behind closed curtains for four years. For instance, the problem with Siri is that it actually only links to a very small circle of apps, nearly all of which are homebrewed Apple ones. For other enquiries it merely conducts a web search. Viv on the other hand offers the ability to connect to third-party apps so that it can execute commands via those apps. During a 20-minute on stage demonstration Viv effortlessly handled complex requests and connected to a number of third-party apps to purchase goods and book reservations.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle natural language queries on a smartphone. Today the pair showed off their newest creation, Viv, a next generation AI assistant that they have been developing in stealth mode for the last four years. The goal was to create a better version of Siri, one that connected to a multitude of services, instead of routinely shuffling queries off to a basic web search. During a 20-minute demo onstage at Disrupt NYC, Viv flawlessly handled a dozen complex requests, not just in terms of comprehension, but by connecting with third-party merchants to purchase goods and book reservations. The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle natural language queries on a smartphone. Today the pair showed off their newest creation, Viv, a next generation AI assistant that they have been developing in stealth mode for the last four years. The goal was to create a better version of Siri, one that connected to a multitude of services, instead of routinely shuffling queries off to a basic web search. During a 20 minute demo onstage at Disrupt NYC, Viv flawlessly handled a dozen complex requests, not just in terms of comprehension, but by connecting with third-party merchants to purchase goods and book reservations. The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform.