this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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I’m surprised the Ask Jeeves brand never became an AI chatbot.
Jeeves apparently was classier than that all the way until the end.
I was thinking this as well. You would have thought they took the "Jeeves" as an agent name.
It's a more meaningful assistant name than Siri or Alexa.
It's harder to pronounce internationally, which makes it a weaker global brand.
Also, in the early days of wakeword detection, the detection algorythm actually triggered by the 'melody' your voice creates automatically when producing certain vocal sounds. This basically triggered a recording before going through deeper analysis to actually determine, if this was supposed to be an actual request.
For Alexa, the a-ex-a is easy to detect. For "Hey Siri" it's basically a 'chime bing bing' sound in a certain rythm. For Cortana, it's or-a-a. But Jeeves is only a single syllable, both the J and 'vs' are harder to pronounce and basically not relevant for wakeword detection. So the whole wakeword is basically just "eee", which is a bad wakeword.
So... Just not gold, both technically for reliability and efficiency and economically, not so great for global brand recognition.
“woke word detection” sounds like a feature on Truth Social.
I’m thinking Siri and Alexa are meant to be more modern, young and hip. Jeeves as a butler has this very old man vibe to it.
Its corpse undoubtedly will be.
I WAS ABOUT TO SAY JUST THAT!!!
Are you s psychic?
Yes*
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