iOS 18 Rumored to Feature Major Siri Improvements

[CarAnalogy]

It’s not an excuse, it’s the reason. Apple misfired with Siri, and now they have to make a painful pivot.

Right, that is the reason. But the excuse is “security and privacy” when actually it has been explained already. They bought an enormous word association mess that they never could fix or upgrade. Fine, I get that, but now they want to tell me it sucks because they respect my privacy. Come on.

I have willingly given Siri access to everything it needs to do its job, and I can see right on the screen that it is transcribing my words correctly. The power of Unix 50 years ago was taking text input and piping it through simple programs in useful ways. Siri can’t do that? And it’s because they respect my privacy? At this point, it’s insulting.

 

[Fraserpatty]

I still have basic issues with talking to a machine. A voice is something that should only be used for interaction with actual living creatures. A world where more and more voice is used for controlling machines is creepy.

That is what my son says. But then, he is autistic and has difficulty thinking outside of the box.

 

[CarAnalogy]

That is what my son says. But then, he is autistic and has difficulty thinking outside of the box.

Sometimes I wonder with kids though, are they the ones seeing it clearly and we’re the ones that have been trained to take weird things as normal?

 

[zoozx]

That won't be hard to improve Siri.
It's Hideous.

Hey Siri, Kentucky fried chicken by me.
I can't find that in you're music.
Hey Siri, how many miles between LA and San Fransisco.
That sounds about right.

 

[TracerAnalog]

Right, that is the reason. But the excuse is “security and privacy” when actually it has been explained already. They bought an enormous word association mess that they never could fix or upgrade. Fine, I get that, but now they want to tell me it sucks because they respect my privacy. Come on.

I have willingly given Siri access to everything it needs to do its job, and I can see right on the screen that it is transcribing my words correctly. The power of Unix 50 years ago was taking text input and piping it through simple programs in useful ways. Siri can’t do that? And it’s because they respect my privacy? At this point, it’s insulting.

Again, privacy and copyright issues, data quality and normalization are all valid reasons for slowing down the development of large language models. For example: ChatGPt learns from the user input, without you as a user having a clue what will be done with your input. It is not easy if you have to curate your data and comply (for example) with EU privacy laws. That is the reason ChatGPT is banned in Italy!

We agree Siri is a dead end, and that Apple seems late to the game, but Apple’s business model (Privacy! Security! On device computing!) is in my opinion a real reason for the seemingly slow development of a privacy sensitive personal assistant AI.

I hope I’m wrong and Apple blows us away this or next September, because we need another competitor for Meta, Microsoft and Google.

 

[TracerAnalog]

You didn’t refute anything I said. You just made speculation.

The exact same phrase worked when online, and I have it set to transcribe what it hears me saying as it hears it. It heard me correctly and had on-device access to everything it needed to do the job.

I don’t know what you were even trying to say in your second paragraph. You still didn’t answer the simple question about why when Apple says Siri processes as much as possible offline, why does such a simple request require internet access? And since the explicitly given explanation is “privacy”, how does sending that to the internet do anything to protect my privacy?

I never said anything about google assistant, I’m only talking about Siri here and its failing to accomplish a relatively simple task that it has full access to.

I agree that it is silly that for some tasks you need a data connection to the mothership. It seems Siri cannot make the decision whether it needs a connection or not… without a connection.

 

[bluespark]

We switched from Alexa to HomePods a year or so ago (for reasons) and it's astonishing how bad Siri is by comparison. Not only does she often fail to provide any answer (no, I don't want to go ask the same question a second time from my phone, thank you very much), but there's no logic to which HomePod responds in the first place. We can be standing right next to a HomePod when we ask our question and the HomePod from two rooms away will answer. When you add in the frequent HomeKit reliability issues, it's really a mess of a product.

 

[steve09090]

You didn’t refute anything I said. You just made speculation.

My point was that comments like those you made are gross exaggerations, thus useless. Plus I wasn’t trying to refute what you said but add to it. Why so combative?

I don’t know what you were even trying to say in your second paragraph. You still didn’t answer the simple question about why when Apple says Siri processes as much as possible offline, why does such a simple request require internet access? And since the explicitly given explanation is “privacy”, how does sending that to the internet do anything to protect my privacy?

I never said anything about google assistant, I’m only talking about Siri here and it’s failing to accomplish a relatively simple task that it has full access to.

I answered the question. Even, what you might think of as being the simplest tasks, still require an interpretation because a machine doesn’t understand what you are asking until it makes that interpretation. That’s why pressing a button on HomeKit to open a garage door is different to asking Siri to do it. One is already interpreted (by you) and one has to be decided by a machine.

An iPhone (or any other smartphone) does not have the ability to determine what you think is a simple task versus a complex task prior to sending the information/verbal command.

With regard to privacy, you’d have to look at Apples Siri privacy policy on this. And whether you believe it or not is up to you.

With regard to other Personal Assistants and my mentioning them; there is no point whinging about Siri when it’s the standard and only practice available at the moment for the above reasons. Kind of pointless talking about how bad Siri is when they all require this connection.

 

[Merode]

As far as I'm concerned, that's useless. Apple hasn't heard about Polish yet and English recognition is finicky at best. I'm fluent and speak with people from Cali daily at work who have no issues understanding me. Siri? It's 50/50. Sometimes it even doesn't know I speak to it unless I shout 'Hey Siri' 4 times right into my iPhone

 

[emmab2006]

If it happens it’s about time . Honestly the only thing my HomePod mini is useful for is setting the timer for cooking ! Siri established its self as a leader, then it was left behind in the dirt by every other company.

 

[Shearwater]

This headline could have equally worked with IOS6😵‍💫

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

I gave up on my HomePod minis all through the house. 50/50 they have dropped off wifi randomly. Even if they’re on, they don’t think there’s a HomeKit house or devices are missing yet it thinks it already has it. ????

When Siri DOES work it’s so primitive in what I can ask and how I phrase it. I know this next 17 update is adding a lot of Google/Alexa type features finally and I will give it a try again but dang.

My Nest always works. Never drops signal or devices. I can nearly talk to it like a normal person for info. “Hey Google….Where’s Bolivia? How long a flight? Can I buy drugs legally while there? Oh yeah what’s the average daily temperature? Thanks!”

 

[CarAnalogy]

My point was that comments like those you made are gross exaggerations, thus useless. Plus I wasn’t trying to refute what you said but add to it. Why so combative?


I answered the question. Even, what you might think of as being the simplest tasks, still require an interpretation because a machine doesn’t understand what you are asking until it makes that interpretation. That’s why pressing a button on HomeKit to open a garage door is different to asking Siri to do it. One is already interpreted (by you) and one has to be decided by a machine.

An iPhone (or any other smartphone) does not have the ability to determine what you think is a simple task versus a complex task prior to sending the information/verbal command.

With regard to privacy, you’d have to look at Apples Siri privacy policy on this. And whether you believe it or not is up to you.

With regard to other Personal Assistants and my mentioning them; there is no point whinging about Siri when it’s the standard and only practice available at the moment for the above reasons. Kind of pointless talking about how bad Siri is when they all require this connection.

Not combative, debative at most.

My only point is that they have talked about offline processing. It's not revolutionary computer science to take the correct text, parse it into reminders, add the home tag to it.

They just don't seem to be living up to their own promises, that's it.

 

[steve09090]

Not combative, debative at most.

My only point is that they have talked about offline processing. It's not revolutionary computer science to take the correct text, parse it into reminders, add the home tag to it.

They just don't seem to be living up to their own promises, that's it.

in 2021 they spoke specifically about having 'some' requests done on the phone due to privacy concerns.

"For many requests, Siri processing is also moving on device, enabling requests to be processed without an internet connection, such as launching apps, setting timers and alarms, changing settings or controlling music.”​

I think you’ll find that they also talk about leaving the privacy information on the phone in the Secure Enclave, not that all the Siri instructions are done on the phone.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

If I talk to machine, it feels like elevating that machine to the same level as me. I am sure there are already toaster that work with voice comments, but I am not ready to talk to a toaster. Some cars even require you to say the name of the brand. You have to say "Hey, Mercedes!". That feels as weird as the hair styles from the seventies.

Even if it does not leak data to Apple or anyone else, it also feels intrusive if Siri looks into my calendar to find a free time slot for me to visit a doctor or my girlfriend. I also do not want Sire or Alexa to learn when I usually leave my house or what my favourite music is.

I very much hate it if I call a hotline and a robot asks me to describe my problem and then the AI will try to give me an answer. That does not really serve me. It just allows the company to save some money and to claim that they have a 24 hour hotline.

 

[Razorpit]

Multi step actions automated with a single voice command sounds cool. How about being able to turn off my HomeKit lights via Siri seamlessly 99% of the time first, though?

Heck I’d settle for 95%. 😄

We’re twelve years in to Siri and still no where near Alexa, Google. It’s shocking the difference in responses when I ask Alexa vs Siri the same thing. Way more information from Alexa.

From my experiences Alexa and Google might be slightly better, but not by much.

I hope this major overhaul, other than making Siri smart for once, will allow a smoother experience for multi-languages requests (e.g. asking in Spanish to play an English song)

Easy there, let’s get everything kind of working in English first. 😉

The problem is that people have become so accustomed to not trusting Siri with anything that no one is going to really take advantage of any of this, especially if it behaves in the same way with slow and canned responses. I use Shortcuts every day but I wouldn't trust Siri to make them for me on the fly. We need real productivity and assistance solutions, which even Shortcuts is pretty shoddy at when done manually.

Yep, I don’t understand Shortcuts. You can only write them for things that should be there in the first place. And anytime I’d want to spend the time to write one for an app I couldn’t because the developer didn’t open it up to allow it.

Umm…Ok so they want to add more features to Siri? I speak clearly and concisely in American west coast English. However Siri still fails to dial a phone number for me at least 10-20% of the time. She will either miss a digit or add a digit unnecessarily.

I also noticed that Siri on Apple Watch often thinks I am asking for the time when washing my hands or crumpling a piece of paper. Asking Siri for directions in Hawaii absolutely confounds her as she can’t handle Hawaiian street names for the life of it. Crazy because the GPS in my 12 year old Toyota could understand Hawaiian street names 95% of the time.

I can only imagine. Living in southwest PA, it is comical to see how Siri handles German, Dutch, Polish, Native American names.

Apple touted all the big AI improvements like every year over the last 1/2 decades… and yet, with years of daily calls behind me, Siri still doesn’t recognize the non exotic names of my mother and sister.

Depending on certain times of the month Siri will sometimes “call my wife‘s cell phone” and sometimes not. Maybe that’s a feat and not a bug? 😂

 

[Johnny907]

LOL, it better! The competition is running way way ahead of Siri, despite Apple’s huge head start.

People love to forget Apple had to purchase that “head start,” and the only thing Siri has done since Apple acquired the company responsible for it is gotten worse.

 

[robertmorris2]

haven't even released 17 yet to the public. I don't like rumors.

 

[Hrududu]

"Here are some results I found on the web"

 

[lazyrighteye]

If nothing happens until iOS 18, that's very late.

Late? Yes. But it's not out of the norm for Apple.

The first commercially available tablet, GRidPad, landed in 1989.
iPad debuted 21 years later.

The first commercially available handheld mobile phone, Motorola DynaTAC, landed in 1983.
iPhone debuted 24 years later.

ChatGPT, the current top dog of voice assistants, debuted in November, 2022.
If Siri gains anything close to ChatGPT-level capability by iOS 18, it will prove a remarkable accomplishment for Apple. 🤪😂

Fun aside, I do understand some of the frustration around Siri's current state. Siri debuted in October, 2011 and it has been slow to evolve. I'll ocasionally ask Siri a bout the weather, my appintments, etc. Theh single-most often query is "what song is this?" In that instances, Siri ha sbeen pretty amazing. I do look forward to a much more robust Siri experience at some point. If it's 2-years out, not only will it be THE marquee topic, but I'll be good and ready. 😜

 

[TechRemarker]

Multi step requests would certainly be lovely, but when people think about Siri and how aweful it is compared to the competitors it's rarely thinking about adding new more advanced features to it. The problem with Siri is how poorly and inconsistently it handles basic requests.
All these years in, and you could call your partner named John 100x a day for 30 years, and have one other contact in your phone named John who you have only called once 30 years ago, and Siri still asks which to call and or chooses to call the one you've almost never called.
Or you say find directions to Starbucks and rather than directions to the one 5 minutes away in your town, it provides directions to ones in another state.
Or of course the most common you ask a request, it shows its thinking, you wait a few more seconds then says its taking a little longer than expected and then finally says to try again later. And you think should I ask it again and risk doing that all over again and thus spending a great deal of time, on something that could have been done manually incredibly fast (but just slightly slower than if siri worked perfectly).
For me, I can do things manually, and it always works and its a set guaranteed amount of time. In an ideal world would do Siri for a lot of that since would be little faster, but simply fails too much.
Siri needs a major transformation to handle being rock solid at all the simple and basic requests before trying to add complexity.

 

[haemolysis]

They really could even just start by making sure the text that is displayed on screen is the same thing that goes into the query. Too many times do I see something like this…

Me: hey siri what’s the time in victoria.
On screen display: hey siri what’s the time in victoria.
Siri response: Ok, calling Victoria

 

[decypher44]

I’ve honestly never used Shortcuts. Not that I think it’s bad, it’s just that I don’t think I have a need to learn how to use it.

 

[jjwwqq]

I never use Safari anyway. I wonder if I should give it a chance…

 

[The Game 161]

Have to see to believe it lol