Apple Wins an Emmy for Siri on Apple TV

Apple has taken home an Emmy for Siri’s technical features on Apple TV, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced on Tuesday.

The Cupertino company was specifically honored with a 2017 Technical / Engineering Achievement Award for “Contextual Voice Navigation for Discovering and Interacting with TV Content,” according to the Emmy website. In addition to Apple, tech firms Comcast, Universal Electronics and Nuance Dragon TV also won an award in the category.

Siri first appeared on the Apple TV platform in 2015, when the company introduced a new set-top box and a revamped Siri Remote tailored for direct interaction with the virtual assistant. But Siri for Apple TV goes beyond simple voice commands, instead using the extent of Apple’s artificial intelligence technology for deeper user interactions with the virtual assistant — like a “What did he just say?” feature that rewinds a movie or TV show and automatically switches closed captioning on.

Indeed, the virtual assistant has a wide range of capabilities. Users can ask Siri broad commands such as “shows me funny movies,” but Siri can also handle granular and intense searches such as “show me the Modern Family episode with Edward Norton.” The virtual assistant can also answer a variety of questions related to the media at hand, including specific director and cast information or the year a particular TV show or movie was released.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has won an Emmy, either. In 2013, the tech giant was awarded an Emmy for “Outstanding Commercial” for an ad spot titled “Misunderstood.” The company also won an Emmy for technical work related to mobile-streaming tech, Business Insider reported.

This year’s Emmy award winners, Apple included, will be honored at the 69th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards event, slated to take place at the Las Vegas-based National Association of Broadcasters trade show on April 8.