Apple Generative AI Features and Smarter Siri Could Launch Next Year

[MacRumors]

Apple is developing a large array of features that use generative AI, including a new version Siri, that could launch next year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that despite Apple CEO Tim Cook's claim that Apple has been working on generative AI technology for years, Apple's executives were "caught off guard" by the industry's sudden interest in AI and have been anxiously "scrambling since late last year to make up for lost time."

Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, John Giannandrea, and senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi are apparently leading the company's AI efforts. Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, is also involved in the push.

Giannandrea is said to be overseeing development of the underlying technologies for a new AI system. Most notably, his team is working on a new, "smarter version of Siri" that is deeply integrated with AI. Gurman says it could be ready as soon as next year.

On the other hand, Federighi is supervising the integration of AI into to the next major version of iOS by introducing features running on Apple's large language model (LLM). Among the new features is a revamped interaction between Siri and the Messages app, enabling users to field complex questions and auto-complete sentences more effectively. Federighi's team is also looking at integrating AI into Xcode to help developers write code more quickly, bringing it in line with services like Microsoft's GitHub Copilot.

Cue is reportedly attempting to add AI to as many Apple apps as possible, including features in Apple Music, such as auto-generated playlists, and productivity apps like Pages and Keynote, where AI could assist with writing or creating slide decks. Apple is also apparently testing the use of generative AI for internal customer service apps within AppleCare.

Apple is purportedly on course to spend $1 billion per year on AI research. Whether Apple should deploy generative AI as a completely on-device experience, a cloud-based setup, or a hybrid approach, is currently a source of debate internally.

Gurman previously reported that Apple is working on a chatbot tool that some engineers have dubbed "Apple GPT" to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Article Link: Apple Generative AI Features and Smarter Siri Could Launch Next Year

 

[SoldOnApple]

I freaking love AI. Can’t get enough of it.

 

[fumi2014]

I honestly think they've they've missed the AI boat now. Even Siri was mostly awful from the outset. They've got the money, of course, to just buy some startups but they do seem strangely weak in some areas these days. Of course, they they can't be expected to excel at everything - they've already got a lot going on.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Certainly be interesting to get a more privacy conscious version of something like chatGTP.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I honestly think they've they've missed the AI boat now. Even Siri was mostly awful from the outset. They've got the money, of course, to just buy some startups but they do seem strangely weak in some areas these days. Of course, they they can't be expected to excel at everything - they've already got a lot going on.

Missed the boat on a newly emerging technology? I’m not sure about that - not yet at least, but they do need to get something going soon that’s for sure.

 

[Razorpit]

I honestly think they've they've missed the AI boat now. Even Siri was mostly awful from the outset. They've got the money, of course, to just buy some startups but they do seem strangely weak in some areas these days. Of course, they they can't be expected to excel at everything - they've already got a lot going on.

Siri was awesome from the outset, then Apple bought them.

 

[TVreporter]

I look forward to my HomePod mini offering a more refined “sorry I can show you that on your iphone” response.

 

[lkrupp]

Society and the culture are going to rue the day AI was unleashed upon the world. Any technology can be used for both good and evil. Unregulated, unbridled AI is ripe for abuse. If you don't believe that then just look at what mobile phones and social media have done to our youth. Every social scientist, psychologist, anthropologist, mental health expert are in agreement that these ‘tools’ have caused havoc. Imagine what AI will do.

 

[neuropsychguy]

I honestly think they've they've missed the AI boat now. Even Siri was mostly awful from the outset. They've got the money, of course, to just buy some startups but they do seem strangely weak in some areas these days. Of course, they they can't be expected to excel at everything - they've already got a lot going on.

Apple hasn’t missed the boat. There are dozens of boats. Implementations of LLMs are just getting started. ChatGPT is excellent and getting better. Microsoft’s implementation of GPT is pretty good but not used widely, although that’s changing. Google Bard is okay but still very rough.

If Apple builds in an LLM that works as well as any of the existing models, it will be hugely successful.

 

[Greenmeenie]

Apple AI…. I like the sound of that. 🤔

 

[Bustycat]

A smarter idiot is still an idiot.

 

[zorinlynx]

Oh gods no please keep that generative AI garbage out of Apple platforms or at least have a toggle to disable it.

I would much rather have no answer to a question than wrong answers.

 

[swiftapplefan]

I look forward to my HomePod mini offering a more refined “sorry I can show you that on your iphone” response.

Yeah, and the fact that you have to ask again on your phone! Why can’t the HomePod just push and show results on your iPhone or the closest device with the display turned on? It seems like such a simple handoff feature.

 

[NEPOBABY]

I freaking love AI. Can’t get enough of it.

Famous last words.

 

[Fraserpatty]

Apple should have been working on a smarter Siri ages ago. They should not have waited until they saw themselves flat footed, they should have made Siri, which is on all their devices, the absolute best it could be from the beginning and constantly improving it.

I hope it is on full display absolutely no later than WWDC, and Apple, please bring back Siri’s ability to search Photos for location, people, and things. I don’t know why this function was ever taken away when it can be done through Spotlight. Apple needs to make Siri the portal to which every device you have, for a true voice first experience. I can’t always type in what I want to know through Spotlight. And for goodness sakes, please don’t make shortcuts the necessary action. The majority of people don’t know how to use Shortcuts, even though the tech world does. If you want people to use, Siri, don’t make it necessary to compose a shortcut to do it.

 

[NEPOBABY]

ChatGPT is excellent and getting better.

It's actually getting worse in some cases.

Some have discovered that GPT4 was just 8 instances of GPT3 stacked on top of each other. That makes it extremely inefficient for what you are getting out of it. Literally scorching the planet to death just to play with a word machine.

Some have also noticed model decay. This is what happens when AI models scrape data created by AI models. It's similar to what happens when a VHS tape is copied again and again and again. The quality degrades over time.

They go from being trained on high quality data to being trained on lower and lower quality data.

So imagine a future where an AI is surfing an internet full of AI generated garbage, fake articles, fake images, and general enpooification.

 

[Fraserpatty]

Apple should have been working on a smarter Siri ages ago. They should not have waited until they saw themselves flat footed, they should have made Siri, which is on all their devices, the absolute best it could be from the beginning and constantly improving it.

I hope it is on full display absolutely no later than WWDC, and Apple, please bring back Siri’s ability to search Photos for location, people, and things. I don’t know why this function was ever taken away when it can be done through Spotlight. Apple needs to make Siri the portal to every device you have, for a true voice first experience. I can’t always type in what I want to know through Spotlight. And for goodness sakes, please don’t make shortcuts the necessary action. The majority of people don’t know how to use Shortcuts, even though the tech world does. If you want people to use Siri, don’t make it necessary to compose a shortcut to do it.

 

[scrapesleon]

A smarter Siri don’t make me laugh

 

[Hkfan45]

Where was apple 10 years ago? Siri is completely useless compared with Google Assistant and has been since the beginning.

 

[zorinlynx]

It's actually getting worse in some cases.

Some have discovered that GPT4 was just 8 instances of GPT3 stacked on top of each other. That makes it extremely inefficient for what you are getting out of it. Literally scorching the planet to death just to play with a word machine.

Some have also noticed model decay. This is what happens when AI models scrape data created by AI models. It's similar to what happens when a VHS tape is copied again and again and again. The quality degrades over time.

They go from being trained on high quality data to being trained on lower and lower quality data.

So imagine a future where an AI is surfing an internet full of AI generated garbage, fake articles, fake images, and general enpooification.

This is the reason for my previous response.

I'm not some luddite opposed to new technology. I've just noticed that generative AI does bad things, like produce wrong answers and rip off other people's art and writing. So I don't want it in Apple's platform which I use heavily.

 

[Hkfan45]

This is the reason for my previous response.

I'm not some luddite opposed to new technology. I've just noticed that generative AI does bad things, like produce wrong answers and rip off other people's art and writing. So I don't want it in Apple's platform which I use heavily.

That’s ok. Current Siri gives you no answers 😀

 

[klasma]

Where was apple 10 years ago?

Starting serious R&D of what became the Vision Pro. Wrong boat, possibly. Also, making usability worse with iOS 7’s flat design. We probably wouldn’t have had that with Jobs, and I would guess he’d also have found Siri embarrassing early enough that it would have much improved by now.

 

[Bones402]

Apple is developing a large array of features that use generative AI, including a new version Siri, that could launch next year, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that despite Apple CEO Tim Cook's claim that Apple has been working on generative AI technology for years, Apple's executives were "caught off guard" by the industry's sudden interest in AI and have been anxiously "scrambling since late last year to make up for lost time."

Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, John Giannandrea, and senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi are apparently leading the company's AI efforts. Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, is also involved in the push.

Giannandrea is said to be overseeing development of the underlying technologies for a new AI system. Most notably, his team is working on a new, "smarter version of Siri" that is deeply integrated with AI. Gurman says it could be ready as soon as next year.

On the other hand, Federighi is supervising the integration of AI into to the next major version of iOS by introducing features running on Apple's large language model (LLM). Among the new features is a revamped interaction between Siri and the Messages app, enabling users to field complex questions and auto-complete sentences more effectively. Federighi's team is also looking at integrating AI into Xcode to help developers write code more quickly, bringing it in line with services like Microsoft's GitHub Copilot.

Cue is reportedly attempting to add AI to as many Apple apps as possible, including features in Apple Music, such as auto-generated playlists, and productivity apps like Pages and Keynote, where AI could assist with writing or creating slide decks. Apple is also apparently testing the use of generative AI for internal customer service apps within AppleCare.

Apple is purportedly on course to spend $1 billion per year on AI research. Whether Apple should deploy generative AI as a completely on-device experience, a cloud-based setup, or a hybrid approach, is currently a source of debate internally.

Gurman previously reported that Apple is working on a chatbot tool that some engineers have dubbed "Apple GPT" to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Article Link: Apple Generative AI Features and Smarter Siri Could Launch Next Year

I just have no desire to use AI voice interaction. Never have but I’m probably way older than most.

 

[imlynxy]

AI is always good, but iPhone shouldn’t restart at night while charging.
Way too much future features we pay for, but …..

 

[nt5672]

Certainly be interesting to get a more privacy conscious version of something like chatGTP.

What would be really nice is if they could just get basic search working for developers. Unless you type exactly what Xcode expects you do not get any results. And this is for very basic stuff like '@AVAILABLE'.

At this point I just don't see apple getting AI right. They are still locked into the 90s using regex's for everything.