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Gurman: Apple Working On Revamped Siri Experience That Doesn't Require 'Hey Siri' Trigger Phrase

MacRumors said:
Apple is working on a way for Siri to be able to understand phrases and commands without the need to use the "Hey Siri" trigger phrase but instead simply saying "Siri."
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Yeah, this ought to do it.

The only way I can live with Siri at this point is to keep it in a pretty small conceptual box by asking it only for things I know it probably won't screw up. "Play WNYC FM" or "add tomatoes to the grocery list" or "set a timer for 15 minutes" or "in Things remind me to email Jeff at 9am tomorrow". These all work pretty reliably but I don't experiment much because if I get too clever, half the time it does something infuriating and I end up yelling at it. I don't want to live a life where I find myself yelling at robots, so I keep my expectations low and it's mostly ok.
 
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Yesterday, Siri scared the crap out of us; we watched Netflix, and a person said something that resembled the "hey siri" command, and Siri began talking loud from the iPad.
 
Here's an idea Apple… Let us name our device and then call it by its given name. It's been 11 years since Siri's introduction, you would have thought we'd be there by now.
 
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I might be alone in this but I would prefer to be able to name my voice assistant for a more personalized experience. Would pair nicely with the many different voices that Siri has now. And yes, the Ironman fanboy in me really wants to name it Jarvis! haha
 
dannys1 said:
Actually I seem to remember this featuring coming - doesn't it create an automation every time you ask though - so when you go to shortcuts you've got LOADS of automations that you need to delete?
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I don’t even think a typical “turn off X in Y minutes” command is usually interpreted as an automation since it’s just an individual one-time request, and automations are usually scheduled or programmed to occur on some kind of repetitive basis.

I think Siri in this particular instance was just really mixing things up and complaining about automations, despite that being irrelevant to what I was asking it to do. I asked it to turn the fan off in 15 minutes again this morning and it worked fine. Maybe Siri was hitting the bottle that night.

That one little experience is really just illustrative of the frequent general inconsistencies and overall unreliability of Siri. Revolutionary in 2011, but neglected and very far behind what other voice assistants have become capable of since then with regular development over the years.
 
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My best Siri story is when I and several others were interviewing a job candidate on Zoom and at one point my Siri piped in to offer to call a suicide prevention line.
 
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MrRom92 said:
I don’t even think a typical “turn off X in Y minutes” command is usually interpreted as an automation since it’s just an individual one-time request, and automations are usually scheduled or programmed to occur on some kind of repetitive basis.

I think Siri in this particular instance was just really mixing things up and complaining about automations, despite that being irrelevant to what I was asking it to do. I asked it to turn the fan off in 15 minutes again this morning and it worked fine. Maybe Siri was hitting the bottle that night.

That one little experience is really just illustrative of the frequent general inconsistencies and overall unreliability of Siri. Revolutionary in 2011, but neglected and very far behind what other voice assistants have become capable of since then with regular development over the years.
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Excellent, well i'll try this again later - i've always wanted it to trigger scenes and things at a later time and never knew why that was so difficult when it literally holds timers, reminders and calendars. I do remember it coming out a few years ago but having no success with it, perhaps time to revisit. When I did do it last time, every time I opened shortcuts it had created another automation for that ONE action, which seems silly - when as you say it's a one and done thing. Hopefully that's not the case anymore or it's very poor programming behaviour.

But yes - I was happier with Siri for home control about 4 years ago - I insisted in having everything in Homekit too for Siri control, but honestly now i'm starting to think about using Alexa instead unfortunately and I really don't want to have to!
 
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There is a new startup question search engine called Andi that gives me better answers than Siri
 
Guys remember the Siri defenders? “Siri works! It’s just as good as google and Amazon!”

Pepperidge Farm remembers 😀
 
"Siri" is a somewhat common name in Southeast Asia/Thailand. How would Siri know a request is for her, and not another person by the name of Siri?
 
Siri is absolute GARBAGE. Why cant they just open up the OS and let people use something like Alexa that actually works.
 
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Just in general conversation Siri thinks I say Hey Siri every once in a while when I don't - annoying but not enough to turn her off.

Shortening the call to just Siri is not going to make that experience get better - its going to increase the false triggers and make people turn her off more.
 
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Docsta80 said:
Siri is absolute GARBAGE. Why cant they just open up the OS and let people use something like Alexa that actually works.
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They don't want to. Maybe they even think Siri is fine. I wouldn't be surprised, this is the same people that for years didn't care to add a proper wheather app to iPadOS, and still refuses to add a Calculator.
 
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Reading these comments is actually heartening -- it seems like we are all safe from the robot/AI apocolypse for a little a little while longer.

Unless, of course, we are asking Siri to understand Asimov's three rules. In that case, the attack is imminent.
 
anakin44011 said:
Reading these comments is actually heartening -- it seems like we are all safe from the robot/AI apocolypse for a little a little while longer.

Unless, of course, we are asking Siri to understand Asimov's three rules. In that case, the attack is imminent.
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Wasn't there a fourth rule in the prequels? I was so young when I read that whole thing.
 
theorist9 said:
Part of the reason Nuance Dragon's speech recognition is superior to Apple's is that the former allows you to train its software to your voice by speaking a series of phrases. I don't know why Apple doesn't do that.

I think the most you can do is say "Hi Siri" three times to train it to recognize your voice. But that only improves its ability to distinguish your voice from others'; it doesn't improve its ability to understand what you're saying.
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I rarely have trouble with Siri not recognizing what I say. The problem usually comes from it misinterpreting my intent or just basic network connection failures.
 
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philcourage said:
They don't want to. Maybe they even think Siri is fine. I wouldn't be surprised, this is the same people that for years didn't care to add a proper wheather app to iPadOS, and still refuses to add a Calculator.
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One of the reasons I still have my original 2010 iPad at my desk is for the free and ad free calculator app I was able to download thats no longer on the store. Obviously they see this job one function as a money spinner since most calculator apps are paid apps and they can collect their Vig. The free ones are so bloated with ads they are unusable.
 
maccymac42 said:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Siri is borked, but the user here doesn't learn very fast and is about as smart as Siri.
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I would have been saying 15 > 1 you %#@%^#%#^%@%@ within two tries and gotten "I won't respond to that"
 
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