Here's What's Changing With Siri in 2025

[CausticSoda]

Siri is a total disgrace. It is my least favourite thing about Apple. I keep it turned off, firstly because it seemed to trigger when I said random things in conversation and secondly because it failed spectacularly to do almost anything I asked of it. I was deeply cynical about the so-called "Apple AI" from the start (despite people on this forum lapping up the PR and saying it would all be ready in time for iOS 18 and a game changer etc.) and I was quite right to be. I think it is extremely unlikely that we will see any marked improvements in Siri, with or without "Apple AI" for several years at best. It will remain firmly off for me until this site is awash with people saying how incredible it has become. Ditto "Apple AI".

 

[CausticSoda]

Well, this week I asked Siri “Navigate to Peebles”; the reply was “Getting directions to Arbroath” (100 miles from Peebles). I then asked to get directions to a name of someone in Peebles from my contacts; same reply “Getting directions to Arbroath”. This kind of nonsense is a frequent occurrence on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and 11PM before it.
Android Auto never does this (same car). Siri is a total embarrassment.

Agreed! You're quite lucky it even managed to identify that you were asking for directions.

 

[UltimaKilo]

They are years behind, but they will eventually catch up with brute force ($).

 

[Jason2000]

Siri is shockingly bad sometimes. Especially when asking it to play music. It oddly favors mumble rap and will play mumble rap if the name of the song you ask for is even remotely similar.

Exactly. I have always complained that Apple has no idea what music I like. It is why I use Spotify which is dead on with its recommendations.

 

[macintologist]

How about using OpenAI's Whisper model for dictation? Siri dictation is so inaccurate compared to it. Whisper can run on device, so no privacy issues.

 

[Corefile]

Most people view Alexa as better than Siri and most don't use Alexa.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

They are years behind, but they will eventually catch up with brute force ($).

Like they caught up with Google Maps? Spotify functionality? Voice Assistants? etc.

I'll try to be optimistic with you but when it comes to spending the money to "catch up" or just stockpile the money, modern Apple seems to maximize the latter.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Most people view Alexa as better than Siri and most don't use Alexa.

I don't know about "most" but MANY use Alexa. Step outside the Apple bubble and you'll find it used among the masses... like Windows vs. macOS and Android vs. iOS and monitors other than the 2 from Apple and buds other than AirPods... and on and on. Inside the bubble, you'd think there's almost nothing else. But a much bigger world is just beyond the walls of the garden... happily using non-Apple tech.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Most people view Alexa as better than Siri and most don't use Alexa.

I know infinitely more people with Echos than HomePods.

 

[sdf]

Siri will know what's on your screen, so when you make a request, you can reference what you're looking at.

I’m trying to remember when Apple first demoed this WWDC. Was it iOS 8? In any case, it’s been a long time.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Is this on an iPhone 16 model ?

Correct! It is on my 16 Pro

 

[AppleofyourI]

I really hope they can get Siti to be conversational. It would be great to actually have it give answers to questions instead of referring me to the web. But, I am also sick of hunting around in menus for settings. If I can say "Siri -- change notifications for "ABC" app" and it does it, that would be awesome. It's super hit or miss now.

 

[alexgowers]

ios needs an overhaul. The hardware can do more than the software allows. Siri is a limited use case much like VR, most people will never use, those that do only set timers or control apple home stuff. AI doesn't help it overcome some magical barrier or hop the walled garden.

iOS requires opening up it's full potential, m4 ipads should be full desktop machines you can plug a display and mouse into for macOS. even iPhones can do more but are slowed down by animations and sluggish UI flair. It's time to make that change, siri has gotten worse not better and the branding is synonymous with failure not success.

 

[macmac30]

The always listening to us and reviewing ours discussions by Apple employees without our agreement feature?

Yeah, it would crack me up to know that Apple's HomePods do a great job of recording my every conversation with my family (You know how you talk about Jamaican Bobsleds with your family member and then the next day you start seeing ads for Jamaica and Bobsleds???), but it does a HORRIBLE job of carrying out simple requests like "Siri, shuffle play my favorites." ever notice how they are not really shuffled? Half the time, I get "Who's speaking?" I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Apple prioritizes audio capture and processing over simple discrete "Hey Siri" commands and that's why we are all noticing how badly Siri has started to suck!

 

[UltimaKilo]

Like they caught up with Google Maps? Spotify functionality? Voice Assistants? etc.

I'll try to be optimistic with you but when it comes to spending the money to "catch up" or just stockpile the money, modern Apple seems to maximize the latter.

I don’t understand this take at all. I have Amazon devices and they are garbage. I prefer Apple Maps far more than Google maps and Apple Music still has a poor UI, but the competition is not much better (Beats was awesome before Apple bought them).

 

[Tagbert]

No kidding. Every psychopath advertiser (OK, that was redundant) will be going nuts to serve ads based on what you are doing this second. Just like when you are typing and predictive text is trying figure out what the current word is going to be. Every key you type will spam ads based on the probability of the final word.

Why do you think that advertisers will have access to the screen? Apple tends to block advertiser access to features like this. An example is view tracking on the Vision Pro. It constantly tracks where your eyes are looking as that is the primary “pointing device” on the Vision Pro. People kept assuming that advertisers would use that to track what you were looking at on a page or ad. In fact Apple doesn’t make that available to apps and advertisers only using it to provide UI interaction.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I wonder how the 8gb of ram will hold up. Probably badly. It pisses me off to spend nearly 2 grands for a device that'll soon feel limited and perhaps even painful in a few years or less

 

[rumagent]

I would really like a detailed description of how Apple plans to keep your data private when integrating with 3rd parties like OpenAI. These people literally stole data to build their LLMs. I have zero trust they will not do the same with any data sent via Apple.

 

[Mescagnus]

In the EU, iOS 18 has been the most boring update ever. Even with 18.2., I'm not seeing anything worth mentioning.

 

[bradman83]

The article says that siri got improved in iOS 18 and up. But I’ve noticed nothing. No improvements for me or is Europe out as it is with other AI features?

The Siri improvements in iOS 18.1 and up are considered part of Apple Intelligence and not available in the EU at this time.

 

[sleeptodream]

Siri is shockingly bad sometimes. Especially when asking it to play music. It oddly favors mumble rap and will play mumble rap if the name of the song you ask for is even remotely similar.

She probably favors what gets requested the most, which is a lot of hip hop/R&B these days

Hopefully with personal context she can learn what we listen to so she can favor songs related to those genres

 

[sleeptodream]

I don't know about "most" but MANY use Alexa. Step outside the Apple bubble and you'll find it used among the masses... like Windows vs. macOS and Android vs. iOS and monitors other than the 2 from Apple and buds other than AirPods... and on and on. Inside the bubble, you'd think there's almost nothing else. But a much bigger world is just beyond the walls of the garden... happily using non-Apple tech.

idk about happily, my parents bitch about Alexa to me all the time, and i can’t troubleshoot anything for them because i don’t use it

honestly idk how people are comfortable having Alexa control their whole smart home and stuff (while concurrently showing a bunch of ads on the Echo Show). it’s super creepy. Apple is the only company i’d trust something like that from, especially with there being a camera on there following you around

my family is the “i don’t have anything to hide, so why should i care about privacy” types 🙄

 

[sleeptodream]

Why do you think that advertisers will have access to the screen? Apple tends to block advertiser access to features like this. An example is view tracking on the Vision Pro. It constantly tracks where your eyes are looking as that is the primary “pointing device” on the Vision Pro. People kept assuming that advertisers would use that to track what you were looking at on a page or ad. In fact Apple doesn’t make that available to apps and advertisers only using it to provide UI interaction.

One weird thing i have noticed though is that when i used to have “attention aware features” turned on, ads would literally pause when i looked away and start playing again when i looked back, so i couldn’t like look away while waiting to skip an ad lol. idk if that’s still a thing, i’ve had it turned off for years now because it was so creepy to me

though it was likely a simple Boolean value that devs had access to, i still didn’t like it

 

[stevemiller]

apple's been saying 'feature x is about to get great' for so many years now, and every single time they somehow make it worse instead.

 

[stevemiller]

Well, this week I asked Siri “Navigate to Peebles”; the reply was “Getting directions to Arbroath” (100 miles from Peebles). I then asked to get directions to a name of someone in Peebles from my contacts; same reply “Getting directions to Arbroath”. This kind of nonsense is a frequent occurrence on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and 11PM before it.
Android Auto never does this (same car). Siri is a total embarrassment.

i had a period where siri refused to pull up directions for anyone in my address book. for every single contact i tried, it would just say "sorry i can't find directions anyone named [person's name]". so it correctly heard their name, correctly understood that i wanted directions, but just... couldn't. and yet when i opened maps and typed in their name, boom, there they were and could navigate as usual. a couple of weeks later, it all started working again.

now take that bug and multiply it by a dozen or so other basic tasks throughout the day, and thats about the experience of using apple products any more for me.

so yeah, when these devices constantly struggle with incredibly basic tasks, forgive me if i'm skeptical about them suddenly nailing 'it'll understand how to do incredibly nuanced things"