Report Details Turmoil Behind Apple's AI Efforts, 'Siri X,' and Headset Voice Controls

[Johnny907]

“Siri‌ X was mostly completed in 2021 and now many of the voice assistant's functions are processed locally.”

Then why is Siri useless at simple things like telling time or adjusting headset volume without an internet connection?

 

[Bigalig2003]

Do we really need a report to tell us this - trying to get Siri to play a piece of music on a HomePod can be extremely frustrating to the extent she will tell you that your music is not available in your library when it patently is! Get a grip Apple - Im not sure its good for my blood pressure.

 

[aidler]

Spot on. I laugh at all of the comments about how the sky-is-falling for Apple. And all of the hand-wringing about Cook, and his failure to lead. Yet Apple is one of the most successful companies in the world, with 160,000+ employees (with no mass layoffs - unlike other tech companies). And many millions of repeat customers.

People need to get a life. As an aside, I use Siri everyday. It works fine.

Probably what Nokia and Blackberry said to their people in 2006.

 

[Frantisekj]

This is a fascinating insight. The gap between something like ChatGPT and Siri is obviously enormous, and I've always been intrigued about the institutional and technical reasons why.

The discussion in this episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast is also pretty informative.

Maybe because Apple knew that they had to insert so many bias rules to get answers they want as we can see in ChatGPT now. The difference would be that Apple would have add marketing rules besides proper answer rules.

 

[aleksander]

I think AI is the most disruptive emerging technology that will become huge in people's lives and it's truly shocking that Apple leadership is missing this boat. I like Apple but some of the dumbness happening there deserves a big cold shower!

 

[rehkram]

Another recent article (I think it was on here) covered the technical design and coding implementation underlying Siri. The upshot was "it needs a complete rewrite". Siri is not "fixable" with discrete updates.

Personally I'm extremely dubious about the wisdom of letting "AI" loose in the public space. Some facts: We still don't know exactly how the human brain works, so "Artificial Intelligence" is an oxymoron. Decent people are self-regulating, yet the world also has its share of pathological liars, wannabe dictators, bigots, cheats, psychopaths, idiots and propagandists, to name but a few.

Couple this with the fact that multitudes of people seem to believe absolutely any garbage that's put in front of them and you can see how unregulated AI will become an existential threat. If I were Tim Cook I'd be nervous about contributing to such abuses, but just hoping it goes away is not the answer either.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Siri does what I need, hands free functionality when required, speech to text is actually very good.
Ultimetly AI will be the end of humanity and I for one don't need it!
Most of the comments on hear are by people, who haven't got a clue, of why Siri is limited and the benefits of that 😏

Kinda just shooting an arrow and painting a bullseye around wherever it lands with that logic.

 

[cmcbhi]

Just in case people do not read, Artificial Intelligence programs LIE, all the time. If they don't know something, they make it up.

 

[Bodhitree]

I think Apple has already missed the boat on Chat-as-a-replacement-for-Search, other people have a significant lead in this area. Besides of course not having their own internet search tech.

More important is what Microsoft is doing with Copilot for Office and especially in developer environments. From what I’m hearing once people get used to these tools they don’t want to go back.

If 2023 is going to be the breakout year for AI and Apple is focussing on AR/VR they could end up with a significant catch-up in this area, which they traditionally haven’t been strong in.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Apple's design team … wanted ‌Siri‌ to appear "all-knowing."

The design team obviously don’t eat their own dog food.

 

[KRBM]

Apple's design team … wanted ‌Siri‌ to appear "all-knowing."

The design team obviously don’t eat their own dog food.

Yeah that's a wild quote. Like, it not just often doesn't know things, it will give you the complete wrong answer domain. "Hey Siri, do I need an umbrella today?" Dutch Siri: "It looks like it will rain tomorrow".

I'm glad that the quality of Siri at least generates turmoil in Apple. It's super weird how bad it is and now that I'm using ChatGPT for anything I want it for my Apple devices ASAP.

 

[CapitalIdea]

Given the fact that Alexa and Google Assistant have turned into an abyss that drains billions of dollars for Amazon and Google (and led to a lot of those layoffs), I personally think Apple is smart not to turn Siri in the same thing. Obviously the language is more limited but that is what happens when you do not monetize the user data, and I am fine with giving up a voice gimmick and retaining privacy.

 

[compwiz1202]

HomePod will allow you to set multiple timers. I've only set named timers for multiples. not sure about just a general timer like that.

"Hey, Siri set a bake timer for 2 hours"
HP:Siri "it's set"

"Hey, Siri set a pasta timer for 3 minutes"
HP:Siri "it's set"

Cool I will have to try. I know it definitely does what I stated if I don't use a name. But it works with Google Nest without names.

 

[karranz]

Windows + GPT is coming and Android + Bard as well. Or Apple wakes up fast or their are going to be blow away. Siri would be crushed if it’s not muchx1000 improved by that time.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Apple is doomed. The top AI developers jumped ship. Apple is no longer the place to work if you want to be part of something great. Cook and the other "executives" turned into bean counters who share a fear of new technology.

But that's exactly what I've come to expect from Tim. And again I have to think of the words of Steve Jobs ....



History repeats. Jobs wanted to make the best products and ignored profit in the first place. Tim "got very greedy" putting profit in the first place and ignoring products.

Then Apple needs another Jobs... That's going to be hard to find, but maybe someone will show up and fill his shoes.

 

[citysnaps]

Probably what Nokia and Blackberry said to their people in 2006.

Yes, anything is possible... like a tsunami consuming the state of California, triggered by a massive earthquake on the other side of the world.

People have been predicting Apple's demise for the last 15 to 20 years. I don't see any competitors in a position or even being close to knocking Apple down.

Maybe when other companies develop their own in-house custom SOC cpu/gpu silicon fostering a product line such as Apples.

Which major tech companies are on the cusp of taking Apple down? Be specific with details regarding the tech involved and when.

Without that, resorting to an anything is possible kind of argument is pretty worthless.

 

[Chriss_m]

You simply don't understand an Apple customer!
Apple does 😊

As an 20 year (exclusively) Apple customer, I’d have to disagree.

What I don’t understand is an Apple devotee. And Apple devotees won’t retain its position as the market leader.

 

[xraydoc]

The blackberry of what?
Apple’s four biggest markets are phones, iPads, macs and wearables.
ChatGPT isn’t replacing any of that.
Even with ChatGPT, there are still thousands of uses for iPhones, Apple watches, AirPods, MacBooks…
Apple could literally come out publicly and say “we’re going to leave all this AI stuff up to everyone else” and they’d be just fine.
Apple stays out of way more markets than they enter, and that’s how it has always been.

I (respectfully) disagree. With Bard and ChatGPT, there’s clearly a major advance in AI assistants coming. If Apple doesn’t integrate it into their hardware/software, the company that does will have a massive advantage with future sales.

Blackberry didn’t think the iPhone GUI and lack of hardware keyboard would impact their business, or if it did, that “they could leave it all up to others and we’d still be fine” as you say.

If you don’t think this next gen of AI assistants aren’t going to change the marketplace, you’ve not been paying attention. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it will be sooner than you think. Blackberry was all but irrelevant within 4-5 years after the iPhone came out despite BB’s attempt to catch up (anyone remember the BlackBerry Storm?). Apple won’t suffer today, but they’ll quickly find themselves far behind the competition if they aren careful. When Google integrates the next version of Bard in to their Google Assistant and IoT/home automation system, it’s going to make investors wonder what the hell Apple was dragging their feet for.

I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have a 4-5 year plan, but if this rumor is to be believed, it sure looks like they’ve wasted a lot of time up to this point.

 

[citysnaps]

As an 20 year (exclusively) Apple customer, I’d have to disagree.

What I don’t understand is an Apple devotee. And Apple devotees won’t retain its position as the market leader.

Did someone here make the claim "Apple devotees" would?

 

[Chriss_m]

Did someone here make the claim "Apple devotees" would?

No, someone made the claim that I didn’t understand the Apple customer. It should have been clear from my post that I was implying he was using the term customer when he meant devotee.

 

[ocnitsa]

The lack of recognizable development on Siri really is a failure of leadership.

It doesn't seem like there was understanding between the highest echelon of folks, the leaders in that unit, and teams working on it.

I agree with folks that privilege privacy...however, I don't think Siri's shortcomings can mainly be attributed to just caring about privacy.

I'm also aware of the potential for other AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, to hallucinate or misinform...however, what kind of information are we talking about? If Siri using some language model like ChatGPT convinced me the Russians had launched a nuclear attack and for some reason I had the ability to launch a counterstrike which started WWIII, yeah, that would be a bad move. But, most of the time the information these assistants are handing me is the weather, music on various music platforms, and conversions of measurements in the kitchen...maybe some timers thrown in there, as well. It would be cool to have more intersectionality between my Apple devices...

However, I am using Alexa 100 percent more than Siri...because I know it will work for what I am asking and in the most intuitive way.

Apple needs to up its game on this.

 

[Choco Taco]

Watching my father scream at his iPhone because Siri won't even do the most basic of things (or does them incorrectly) is always fun to watch. Siri is absolute trash and has been for years. They really need to focus heavily on improving Siri. If all they announced at the next event was massive Siri improvements, I'd be content. "Privacy" is no longer an excuse as to why Siri is so bad. Siri isn't even good at the things it does in its limited space.

 

[mrothroc]

You don't need interns for this. An LLM will do it. Either GPT3 or any of the equivalent open source versions would be enough.

I took a couple of hours to work with ChatGPT to do this. See the python script in the repo. It gets the top 100 submissions from the given subreddit, categorizes them into Suggestion, Unexpected, or Frustrated, and saves a one line summary for each one. It also figures out 10 clusters and saves a representative member of each in a separate file.

The only reason it took that long is because I don't know python. This is the power of these new tools.

GitHub - mrothroc/redditsentimentgpt: Analyzes the sentiment of submissions on a subreddit. The script first fetches the top 100 submissions of the past year from the specified subreddit. It then analyzes each submission's title and text with OpenAI

Analyzes the sentiment of submissions on a subreddit. The script first fetches the top 100 submissions of the past year from the specified subreddit. It then analyzes each submission's title an...

github.com

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I (respectfully) disagree. With Bard and ChatGPT, there’s clearly a major advance in AI assistants coming. If Apple doesn’t integrate it into their hardware/software, the company that does will have a massive advantage with future sales.

Blackberry didn’t think the iPhone GUI and lack of hardware keyboard would impact their business, or if it did, that “they could leave it all up to others and we’d still be fine” as you say.

If you don’t think this next gen of AI assistants aren’t going to change the marketplace, you’ve not been paying attention. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it will be sooner than you think. Blackberry was all but irrelevant within 4-5 years after the iPhone came out despite BB’s attempt to catch up (anyone remember the BlackBerry Storm?). Apple won’t suffer today, but they’ll quickly find themselves far behind the competition if they aren careful. When Google integrates the next version of Bard in to their Google Assistant and IoT/home automation system, it’s going to make investors wonder what the hell Apple was dragging their feet for.

I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have a 4-5 year plan, but if this rumor is to be believed, it sure looks like they’ve wasted a lot of time up to this point.

So you just didn’t answer my question.
In the next five years, why would someone replace their AirPods with AI.
Or how about their Apple Watch.
Or there iPad.
You’re not demonstrating to me how Apple loses here, your just saying “AI is happening it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening” without answering how this impacts Apple at all.
You can use chatGPT on Apple devices… Nothing is stopping you.
ChatGPT hasn’t, and most definitely won’t, interrupt any of Apple’s biggest markets which are hardware.
it could be argued in certain markets, where Apple software advantages Don’t matter at all (such as China) the only advantage to Apple is their hardware. ChatGPT doesn’t change that.
And even if this happens, let’s pretend that chatGPT totally causes Apple‘s hardware and software to not matter in the slightest anymore… zero iPhones being sold, zero max, zero iPads…
Apple still has plenty of things they can fall back on. There’s Apple TV+, theres all of their Health and Fitness efforts, there’s their 20+ years long relationship with the music industry… they have tons of fallback options.
And none of this is relevant anyway because every two or three years something comes along that is apparently going to be the doom of Apple.
Windows 8 was supposed to destroy Apple‘s iPad and Mac at the same time… It didn’t.
Pro customers ditching Apple was supposed to destroy them… It didn’t.
Foldable phones are supposed to be the destruction of Apple… They weren’t.
Google stadia will destroy Apple’s mobile gaming Lee… It very much didn’t.
Now it’s USB-C, sideloading and ChatGPT that’s going to destroy Apple.

 

[nottorp]

Apple's uncompromising stance on privacy has also created challenges for enhancing ‌Siri‌, with the company pushing for more of the virtual assistant's functions to be performed on-device.

That sounds like semi-independent confirmation that Apple means it when it's talking about privacy?

That's good.