Your smartphone will be your personal assistant: Apple Siri & Google Now

A few years ago, Apple acquired Siri, and this artificial intelligence (AI) product is now part of the iPhone 4S launched last October 2011. It includes functionalities to make it a virtual personal assistant that we always bring along.

Recently when Google announced the next version of Android, Jelly Bean, they promised us with  Google Now, which is a search-centric, voice-powered digital AI personal assistant to compete with Siri.

We can anticipate one more interesting function in our smartphone in near future, which is a personal assistant who knows about our time schedule and proactively alert/remind us on upcoming appointments, and knows our interest and hobby and provide useful suggestion/answer that match with our interest.

It will also learn the detail in the air-ticket that we purchased, and able to kept us updated with boarding information, latest departual/arrival time schedule, the weather at the destination, etc.

It will be able to remind us about the birthday and anniversary of our family members and close friends.

When we are on the road, it will alert us on possible traffic jam ahead, and suggest for alternative route.

Nowadays, a smartphone is already very much more than a phone that we use to make call and send SMS. The revolution will continue with more and more features and functionalities added in.