Partnering with True Knowledge

by Dag Kittlaus
on August 11th, 2009 | in Siri

We are excited to announce that we are partnering with True Knowledge, an answer engine which uses natural language to understand and answer questions. This is the first of many partnerships that we’ll announce over the coming weeks and months.

The collaboration is a great fit for both of us. True Knowledge offers the leading semantic answer engine, and as a result, Siri gets a lot smarter. In return, True Knowledge will be a big part of our rollout this year, and we’ll be introducing their service to millions of new users.

How does True Knowledge work?

True Knowledge taps subject matter experts around the globe to build its information repository, bringing together the benefits of machine-driven automation and people-driven intelligence. And similar to Siri’s human interaction paradigm, True Knowledge uses Semantic Web technologies to enable computers to work and think like we do, drawing inferences and conclusions to find the right information.

As a result, Siri will now be able to answer questions you might rely on your assistant to field. For example, you can check the local time in London so you don’t miss an important call or quickly look up trivia while you’re out with colleagues or friends; for example, “Who was the 41st President?”.

We at Siri like to quote John Battelle, who once wrote that “the future of search is a conversation with someone you trust”. This partnership moves us one step closer to that vision.