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

[Wando64]

“Gurman says that Apple is working on a way for ‌Siri‌ to be able to understand phrases and commands”

That would be a good start

 

[maxfromdenmark]

Wow, I’m honestly impressed and absolutely sure that it will be “one more thing” during the coming WWDC. 😝

 

[Enzo Morocioli]

Customize the activation command per each device. It should be trainable, and take place during the initial setup period. Then they need to have several more lengthy training protocols in specific domain areas, so that the AI can learn dynamic, conversational and transactional interactions.

 

[antiprotest]

I sometimes accidentally trigger Siri even now.

I would prefer to be able to change the trigger words to anything I prefer.

I never use curse words in my daily speech, but there are choice words and phrases that I would like to call Siri. "Hey you useless piece of ____" or just "Hey ____" would do nicely.

 

[JosephAW]

We need to change the name of Siri to any name: computer, Jarvis, hey you, grovel...

 

[Fraserpatty]

Maybe Apple will change “Hey Siri” to “Hi Siri” OMG 😵‍💫.

All jokes aside, I think Siri will play a huge part in Apple’s upcoming AR/VR Apple headset. I can see myself playing certain commands and Siri will get the job done. It will be the biggest factor.

I thought that was going to happen when Apple Watch came out. Unless you are young with 20/20 you can barely use the watch without Siri. Or the HomePod. It seems nothing will make Apple realize that their devices need a better working voice assistant. Instead, what they are doing is taking away features. An example of course that I am always talking about is taking away our ability to have Siri search photos for locations, objects, and dates. Siri Used to do that and some of us with 10,000 photos really appreciated it. I know you can manually search, but Siri was much, easier to use. Now, I can’t get Siri to read out my notifications in iPadOS 16. I had her read them out every day in iPad iOS 15, and listened to them while I was doing other things. As a person getting a little along in years Siri was very helpful to me, but now she’s getting less so because the very things that were a big help to me apple is taking away. Why?

 

[Itinj24]

I’ll take the wake word, “Siri-califragilisticexpialidocious if they can just get her to work as advertised FFS.

 

[Someyoungguy]

In other news, drug companies working on new thalidomide experience that includes an easier to open lid.

 

[Crow_Servo]

They should require “please” in our commands, so as to not upset Siri.

 

[mjs916]

Apples fixes bugger all. Just more dung on the pile.

I live in the UK. WTF are shades? we have curtains and/or blinds. It drives the misses potty when siri says "closing the shades"

You may already know this but in case you don’t or someone else passing by can use this I’m posting a screenshot:

Long press the device in Home, then choose Accesory details as shown in my pic.

From there find the settings gear in the lower right and you can change the name. Siri will use this name when confirming actions.

 

[mjs916]

They should require “please” in our commands, so as to not upset Siri.

I had to laugh at that because my ex gf was always extra polite to Siri for this reason 😂

 

[munpip214]

I’m totally for improving siri, but the portion of hardware and software that detects the”Hey Siri” is not the same since it is always on and listening. if that cannot detect the triggering sequence then the rest of it is useless.

 

[Fraserpatty]

Apple needs to go Ex Machina on Siri and make her sentient. Go Apple!

No. I don’t want her sentient, even if that is some thing that Apple could do. I just want her to be able to do all the things that she used to be able to do like search photos for example, or read notifications. She can tell us the weather in the city. Why can’t she tell us the pollen count and the pollen type? All the things that are on our devices she ought to be able to tell us and search for like spotlight can . And she needs to be consistently good at that. She doesn’t have to be sentient to do that. Apple needs to put its engineers on real things of importance for those of us who use Siri. Not taking away the hey in the trigger word. What a waste of resources.

 

[Eldaerenth Faexidor]

No. I don’t want her sentient, even if that is some thing that Apple could do. I just want her to be able to do all the things that she used to be able to do like search photos for example, or read notifications. She can tell us the weather in the city. Why can’t she tell us the pollen count and the pollen type? All the things that are on our devices she ought to be able to tell us and search for like spotlight can . And she needs to be consistently good at that. She doesn’t have to be sentient to do that. Apple needs to put its engineers on real things of importance for those of us who use Siri. Not taking away the hey in the trigger word. What a waste of resources.

Hey, to each their own. I'm not going to judge you for that. May your evening be blessed with happiness, my friend.

 

[Fraserpatty]

I just want an alternate trigger name. Siri can refer to any device in the room, but I’d also like to call out my HomePod, Watch, iPhone, and Mac by name.

This!
Hey SiriMac, HeySiriWatch, HeySiriPhone, etc. would solve many problems!

 

[Unami]

Siri works well sometimes but is delightfully unuseable on other times. Changing the awkward trigger phrase would at least help a little - although i'd like to change it into something else like "computer", "mother" or "K.I.T.T".

Personally I think, although alexa and google are a little better at understanding things, they are not far off. And siri's more natural voice makes more than up for it, imho. Alexa just sounds dead - at least in german.

Still, as long as those assistants don't remember things and are able to lead a context based dialogue, they'll never be more than a very limited speech based command line.

 

[Fraserpatty]

Hey, to each their own. I'm not going to judge you for that. May your evening be blessed with happiness, my friend.

I think basically we want the same things. Just to have Siri be more helpful! Blessings to you too.

 

[krewger]

Let me pick what I say.

 

[Alexwastaken]

Why not just scrap Siri and start over. Apple ignored Siri for like 5 years after introduction. Everyone else has moved on to something that works. Changing "Hey Siri" is not going to fix it.

How do you know this wasn't the case, and why it's been getting ignored?

 

[Fraserpatty]

This. Exactly, precisely this.

Every time Apple announces an "improvement" to Siri that boils down to "more sports scores, faster!" because Eddy Cue loves sports, I want to throw something against the wall. I don't care about sports. I just want Siri to get better at understanding what I need and then executing on it.

To this day, my wife STILL can't use personal requests on our HomePods, across three different iOS versions.

If they change Siri‘s voice again without making her functionality better, I WILL throw my iPad against the wall in frustration.

 

[macguru212]

More importantly, I'd like the option of celebrity voices.

I can hear Estelle Costanza yelling directions "Turn left, you idiot!" or screaming back at me "You set the timer! I'm not doing it!" 😆

TBH Siri is a bit of a twit, but I've grown to use it more with increasing frustration but do hope for better usefulness someday.

 

[Ashbash75]

You may already know this but in case you don’t or someone else passing by can use this I’m posting a screenshot:

Long press the device in Home, then choose Accesory details as shown in my pic.

From there find the settings gear in the lower right and you can change the name. Siri will use this name when confirming actions.

Yup, They are called curtains and even the picture is of a set of curtains But thanks anyway.

 

[Onelifenofear]

So Siri works perfectly for me every time for any HomeKit stuff. However it’s lacks context based language for lots of random stuff.

Alexa and google are better but privacy is bad and most devices are cheap and can’t hear you. I have 3 HomePods I can invoke Siri from 3 rooms away.

You want bad Voice recognition… try a Tesla.

I’d love to have any wake word. I know an Alexa so changed to echo. Siri doesn’t roll off the tounge.

House
Car
Computer
Or various other movie Ai/robots
Hal
Marvin etc

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

Me: "Hey, Siri. Play my Music"

Siri: "Playing songs from Apple Music"

Me: "Hey, Siri. Play music from my Library."

Siri: "Playing songs from Apple Music"

Me: "Hey, Siri. Play music from MY Library."

Siri: "Playing all songs, shuffled."

Me: ...

 

[Tagbert]

Talk about focusing on the wrong thing. Siri doesn't work. It is that simple. How long is Apple going to be in denial about the importance and reality of this and start over. Maybe Tim Cook is a genius at logistics and supply chains but really has no clue about "AI." I mean, in five minutes of using Google I can see it is so far beyond Siri in terms of accuracy and usefulness. They must know the Emperor (Siri) is not wearing any clothes (is flawed at its core). If Apple hasn't figured out how to "fix" it by now (bring it up to even marginal parity with its competitors), that tells me it is so flawed it is not fixable. I really hope Apple is working on something from the ground up in parallel with Siri, developing it behind the scenes, so they can scrap the current Siri and just replace it with something that works as well as Google or Alexa did 3 years ago, and play catch-up from there. They could even just continue to call it Siri if they want. Or they could call it something new and provide instant relief to the millions of Apple users whose first order of business in buying an Apple product is to make sure Siri is turned off (except on HomePod).

The problem is that Siri works well most of the time but then when it fails, it looks stupid and the experience is frustrating. The inconsistency is annoying.