When the iPhone 4S  was launched, people, especially those who aren’t a big fan of Apple products, belittled the new iPhone and even Siri, Apple’s talking assistant.  Android and Windows users kept saying that Siri’s technology is nothing new and it has been around for such a long time, it just wasn’t that popular.

Here’s the funny part: after people tried their best to stomp on Siri, the AI only increases in popularity to the point that app developers are quite focused on making Siri-clones for other platforms.

Android Siri Clone

Fandroids were the first to bash Siri but when the AI came out, people using Android devices were searching the Android Market for apps like Siri, and the Android Market didn’t disappoint.  A string of voice-activated personal assistant apps were long present in Android’s app store, and only gained popularity once the iPhone 4S came out.

But not all Siri-like applications are created equal.  Before 2011 ended, app developer Official App launched Siri for Android in the Android Market.  To make a long story short, the app looks and acts like Siri, but it’s a comlete app knockoff.  And Google wasn’t happy with that; they’re already in a heated battle with Apple and having a Siri-clone in their app store will just make the situation worse.  So just hours after the app clone was launched, it was quickly pulled out, the developer account closed from the Android Market.

Windows Siri Clone

As if to save face after the very embarrassing video of Microsoft TellMe vs. Siri came out, Microsoft is probably happy to see the ultimate Siri competitor, Ask Ziggy.  It’s actually a third-party app designed by Shai Leib to bridge the functionality gap between the WP7 platform and iOS.

Ziggy functions much like Siri in a way that it can call, text, and email contacts; it can also update Windows Live, Facebook, and Twitter statuses; get weather quotes, stock values, flight statuses.  Aside from this, Ziggy can also do simple math problems and answer any question it’s asked.

But since the app was made by only one person, you can’t really expect it to work as well as Siri, which was developed by a team of developers over some time.

According to TheNextWeb, “Ziggy’s not good enough to use. The interface is confusing, hard to parse, and dark. Even more, the voice recognition is less than what Siri offers, which is itself insufficient. Ziggy can handle some queries with ease, when your voice input is not garbled, however that’s not a guarantee, and the queries that it can manage are not that time-saving on the whole.”

Nevertheless, there’s a growing demand for an AI system that’s consumer-ready.  And for Microsoft, one of their biggest in-moves could actually be their Sync technology found in many Ford vehicles.  Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins details Microsoft’s realistic AI integration in his analysis, which you can read here.