Coder creates Siri proxy
Voice control for all your toys?
An enterprising coder has created a proxy server for Apple's Siri, the voice assistant integrated into the iPhone 4S but driven by an Apple server.
Siri Proxy sits between the 4S on a Wi-Fi connection and the internet bridge to Apple's guzzoni.apple.com server, which interprets the voice recording and squirts back the decode as an XML file.
Siri Proxy can intercept that file and edit it to add extra information based on the original request.
A basic example: say, "Test Siri proxy," and Siri will respond with, "Siri Proxy is up and running!" if the proxy has been installed correctly.
The developer, known only as Pete and by his Twitter handle, @plamoni, used the proxy to control a Wi-Fi thermostat, but the hooks are there to tap into a range of applications.
Of course, punters will need an iPhone 4S' unique ID code in order to validate requests sent by the proxy to Apple's server. They'll also require "a pretty solid knowledge of certificates and openssl" for setup, says @plamoni.
The creation of Siri Proxy follows developer Applidium's decoding of the Siri server protocol last week.
You can get Siri Proxy code and installation instructions at @plamoni's Github site. ®
COMMENTS
I like hacks.
Hacks are cool. Hacks light up the way around the intended purpose. And if they are not malicious, they are also Good.
Google's voice servers are way better at the speech->text thing, but they only do that. Siri goes the tiny extra step and does its limited AI thing (kind of like Racter did, long years ago on Amiga, for instance). It can be occasionally useful, but no game changer.
That said, I'd like to play arond with a Siridroid on my HTC, even only for kicks.
If somebody can fake iphone4s' UID (don't know about if it's strictly legal but anyway), there is no reason it can't even be hacked to run on an old S60 device. It'd be nice to have the Apple's marketing trick exposed - like Siri running on an old yet sturdy Nokia, and not on, say, iphone4..
I wonder
if there's any reason not to do this with google's voice servers instead?
Google's systems recognise English (not American English which is a different thing), including regional accents, not to mention actual other languages. Much more useful than Apple's rather limited system.
It's available to android apps already, so there's an API interface in existence, it just needs a widdle tiny bit of reverse engineering. And, of course, no iPhone unique ID.
You have to ask yourself if they're evil enough?
Seriously?
On what basis can they sue? Maybe the DMCA but that has exemptions for interoperability.
How is this different from setting up local mail server / spam filter which collects from from a third party? You are extending the functionality of the existing service 'purchased/developed/operated' by your provider by inserting an extra link into the chain.
Furthermore the only people Apple can potentially take to court are Apple customers; you have to own a 4S to get the unique code.
You have to ask yourself if our fruity chums going to risk a massive PR shit storm in order to sue their own customers on a very shaky legal foundation over something that will potentially *increase* 4S sales.
This won't end well
It's a private service, purchased/developed/operated solely as a selling point for their latest hardware, by a company with well funded, and dare I say, eager legal teams.
This hack makes Siri look easy in the same way that cracking your neighbours wifi network makes broadband look easy, it ignores all the hard stuff that someone else had to build and continues to pay for.
