Now AI powered virtual assistants such as Siri and Google are extremely useful. In any case, as a rule, they are conflicting with voice recognition, particularly if you talk with an accent. They additionally don’t appear to be able to hold logical conversations. Hound is a virtual assistant created by the people over at SoundHound, and it is great.
Now if you compared Hound with Siri and Google using the most common commands, and some context based searches. Be it voice recognition, context based cross questioning, or even playing games. Hound is not as interactive as Siri, and generally not as witty either, but rather in practically every other useful way, Hound trumps Siri and Google Now.
1.Availability
Hound is available on both iOS and Android, though only in the US. In case you are not from US, and need to give Hound out, check our guides on installing geo-restricted apps & games like Pokemon Go in any nation on iOS and Android. Since it’s accessible on both the platforms, users can easily switch platforms and get the Hound assistant on their devices.
When you have installed Hound, you can release it, and it approaches you for a couple of permissions. Allow or deny according to your needs, but remember, if you deny permissions like “Location”, Hound will not be able to check the weather for you, or perform other location dependent tasks.
2.Voice Recognition
Make sure this varies from person to person, but, at least for me, Hound’s voice recognition appears to work way better than Siri or Google Now’s. If you to rank them, just say Hound > Siri > Google Now. Even though, Siri recognizes my speech faster than Google Now does, Hound beats them both.
3.Remembering Context
Google Now is rather lacking when it comes to recalling context between multiple queries. Siri is a little better, at least at some commands. But, Hound is awesome at remembering context. In fact, when you first release Hound, the tutorial shows off this capability of the assistant.
Here are a couple of screenshots showing Hound’s, Google Now’s and Siri’s responses to cross questions about the weather.
[ad type=”banner”]- “What’s the Weather Like Tomorrow?”
- “And What About a Day After?”
- “And What About Two Months After?”
Note: Uh, what, Google Now?
- “How About Tomorrow in Rome?”
As you can see in the screenshots, Hound perfectly understands context so does Siri, at least for weather. But, Siri’s responses are usually less than satisfactory. Google Now, on the other hand, completely lost context on the “two months later” query, but, to its credit, caught up with the context again on the fourth query.
Note: you didn’t actually phrase the query to Google Now as “weather tomorrow in Rome”. Google Now automatically changes the query to the context it understood the query in.
4.Complex Queries
Hound handles complex queries truly well. Hound, Siri, and Google Now a couple of complex questions on the lines of weather and hotel bookings, so we should see exactly how advanced Hound is, as compared to Siri and Google Now.
- “Did It Rain in New Delhi Three Days Ago?”
While Google Now does give results for past weather, it’s not as well organized as Hound.
- “Find Me Hotels in Bangalore for the First Weekend Next Month.”
Note: Siri didn’t understand what you said, so you modified it by manually typing in the query.
- “Only the Ones Less Than $200 with WiFi”
Note: Again, Siri didn’t understand on the first try, and you had to manually type the query. Hound, however, did it also quickly modified the search to match the new parameters, whereas Google Now completely lost the context by the third query.
5.Quirks, Wit and Personality
Possibly the only category where Siri beats Hound “Quirks, Wit and Personality” while not exactly important in a virtual, AI assistant, these things do add an almost human touch to them. You asked Siri, Google Now and Hound to do things like sing songs, and tell jokes, and… well.
- “Sing me a song”
Note:
If you happy that Google Now tries to be more functional with any command, it clearly lacks wit and that almost-human touch that Siri and Hound have.
- “Tell me a joke”
