Apple Inc. launched last week iPhone 4S, which has Siri, a voice-recognition system that turns the device into a hands-free personal assistant. Sooner a robotic assistant that takes voice commands will no longer be unique to iPhone 4S or Apple devices. Siri has artificial intelligence -- its understanding of the user evolves. AI won't be replacing or outsmarting humans like in the film "i, Robot" in the not-so-distant future.

But it's possible -- although unlikely (?) -- voice-based commands on the Siri-like artificial intelligence software would make present input devices, namely the keyboard, mouse, and the touch-screen, obsolete.

With Siri, you need not type on your virtual or physical keyboard or swipe or tap on your touch-screen: you can actually talk to the robotic assistant and ask her to send text messages that she writes from your words, schedule meetings, make notes, check the weather, and open apps. Here's Apple's Siri TV commercial.

The Siri artificial intelligence software was derived from research conducted to make computers more intuitive at understanding and working with soldiers in action.

Though still in beta version, Siri has so far impressed: it allows you to speak naturally, it performs tasks quickly and efficiently, and it provides correct (or at least the best possible) answers to your queries. She'll also eventually raise her IQ, as the voice recognition-based assistant is also designed to learn and adapt to her user.

Siri at present just works about 85 to 90 percent of the time, compared to the touchscreen working 100 percent of the time, says Mail Online's Rob Waugh. The software doesn't fully function outside the United States. And Siri couldn't comprehend you when you speak in your native tongue or language.

But soon Apple will update Siri's brain and will perform tasks correctly 100% of the time. Eventually Siri could be developed to have cognitive skills, decision making, and higher reasoning. It could for example start suggesting that you dump your girl based on the number of cancelled dates from the girl or the prevalence of curse words in her text messages.

The huge demand for Apple devices has put artificial intelligence in the hands of millions (in fact, 4 million in the first three days). But after the euphoria has died down, users will probably go back to the touch-screen and stop using Siri every minute, or even every day.

Steve Jobs didn't invent the voice-based personal assistant. But Apple has the ability to create demand, make the technology more desirable, and entice rivals to follow suit. Apple has been able to sell at least 40 million iPads in the past two years notwithstanding previous claims that nobody would buy a computing device that falls between a smartphone and a laptop. And after making the iPhone and iPad popular, Android rivals have created their own button-less devices.

Given that Siri is the main attraction of iPhone 4S and how technology quickly accelerates, we should be seeing in the future voice-control software that are smarter and have more functionality.

This raises the question as to whether the QWERTY keyboard and even the touch-screen would each eventually become a thing of the past.

The iPhone released in 2007 made the physical QWERTY keyboards in the then popular BlackBerry phones obsolete. The physical keyboard, mouse and the trackpad are quickly losing their relevance in mobile devices after the success of the iPad and other touch-screen devices.

Would you waste time swiping across the screen to look for an app, or using your fingers to play a movie when you can just tell your device to open this app or do more complex computing tasks? Would you bother typing on a keyboard when there's an app that could convert anything you say to text?

Siri is just exclusive to iPhone 4S (you can't have Siri even if you update your old Apple device with iOS 5), and Apple only has less than 20% of the smartphone market, and even just has 5% of the entire mobile phone market. So probably, we won't be seeing everyone literally talking to their phones in the next six months.

But given how Apple blazes the trail in mobile devices, more Siri like apps would likely be available, and more users will be using should be using such voice-based systems in the future.

As CNET's Scott Webster points out, the concept of using a smartphone as a personal assistant is certainly appealing, but it's not necessarily new. He cites, Voice Actions , a Google feature introduced for Android 2.2 (Froyo) devices, that lets users call contacts, send messages, complete common tasks, among others. But he notes that none of the current voice-based applications that are as well rounded as Siri.

Execs at Microsoft and Google have taken jabs at Siri and have downplayed Siri's impact on the tech industry.

Google Android chief Andy Rubin said at AllThingsD's Asia D conference in Hong Kong that people shouldn't be communicating with their phone. "Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone," he said. Microsoft's Andy Lees at the AllThingsD's Asia D conference said he didn't think Siri was "super useful."

But Rubin, while downplaying how pervasive Siri will get in the market, acknowledged that Google did build a voice recognition function in Android though it wasn't as advanced as Siri. Lees also noted that that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 has its own voice recognition feature that will harness the full power of the internet because it uses Bing for its voice search feature.

Questions about whether there is an Android alternative to Siri and when Siri would have more functionality outside the U.S. will support contentions that voice activated personal digital assistants will be the main feature in the next batch of smartphones or tablets hitting shelves.

Awed by Siri's popularity, Android developers have in fact created in a span of 8 hours an alpha version of Iris (Siri in reverse) for the Android Market.

"Inspired from the iPhone feature Siri, iris interacts with you in voice" and "makes your phone talk on topics ranging from Einstein to Mozart. Just 'ask' Iris. Gone are the days when you "Google searched" for information. She will talk to you on any topic, ranging from philosophy, culture, history, science to general conversation," said Dexetra.

As tweets and posts on the "Awesome Siri" were filing everywhere, its team of developers decided to work on a " a tiny engine that could answer your questions, digging the results from the web," said Dexetra's Narayan Babu, who claimed that his team created the Iris app in only 8 hours.

Although rivals have a long way to go, the Iris creators and Apple rivals competitors would likely be able to provide three months from now voice-activated apps that are smarter then Siri's debut version.

And that's the price of the pace of innovation: earlier versions of a technology are quickly becoming obsolete.

Is Siri-type technology replacing keyboards and touch-screens not a question of "if", but "when"?