Don't like Siri? Build your own!
Jason Mars has built an intelligent personal assistant called Sirius that anyone can download and modify for their own purposes.
This story first aired in April 2015.
Now more than ever, people are using "intelligent personal assistant" software like Siri and Google Now, to help them do things like find a contact number, add something to their calendar, or book a reservation.
Jason Mars is a computer science prof at the University of Michigan who studies intelligent personal assistants. He and his colleagues have decided to build their very own intelligent personal assistant, from the ground up. They call it Sirius and unlike the other proprietary software agents, Sirius is open-source, which means anyone can download it and modify it for their own purposes.