The virtual assistants of mobile phones (or smart speakers) are very far from the possibilities offered by services such as GPT-3. Logically, they are different utilities that cover complementary but not identical needs. However, can you imagine combining the voice conversations of assistants like Siri with the synthesis and analysis capabilities of GPT-3?
This is precisely what a developer has achieved, combining Siri with GPT-3 chat and increasing the possibilities of Apple’s assistant. Logically, it is a proof of concept, and is rather intended to provide greater capabilities to Siri in terms of control of the connected home, but it is still curious.
And it is that Siri, although it has improved enormously in recent years, it is still far behind the competition and, in terms of interaction with the smart home, the truth is that it continues to be quite confused.
GPT-3 to the rescue of Siri to control HomeKit devices
In it video posted On Reddit, developer Mate Marschalko shows the assistant controlling your HomeKit smart home devices and responding to queries with relatively vague prompts that today’s voice assistants like Siri would normally have a hard time understanding.
Basically, it’s combined the synthesis and compression capabilities of GPT-3 and Siri’s options for controlling devices to make the experience more natural and conversational. And in general, something less robotic and orthopedic.
Logically, the system has something of a cheat, since what it actually does is use Siri to launch iOS Shortcuts, which have specific functions to control HomeKit devices.
The operation, however, is not as simple as creating your own shortcuts. And it’s especially clever: with a Siri voice command, it executes a shortcut that in turn sends a message to GPT-3 requesting a response in a machine-readable format. Once it receives a response from GPT-3, Shortcuts parses it to control smart home devices or respond via Siri.
Of course, if you want to try it, it will not be free. The developer says that each command sent through the GPT-3 API costs $0.014. Turning the bulbs on and off several times a day is going to cost you, for the moment, more expensive than continuing to do it with Siri. Even if you have to make several attempts.