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

[icanhazmac]

And speaking of setting timers, why is it the $30 Alexa in my kitchen can set multiple timers and my $1000 iPhone 14 Pro can only set one?

Because your $30 Alexa is subsidized by Amazon collecting and selling your data.

While I completely understand that an "assistant" app or functionality would need access to the above information, ex: how would an assistant call a contact without access to your contacts, I do not have any trust in Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, et al to not also collect that information instead of just using it for the task at hand. Notice how the above states "the following data may be COLLECTED and LINKED to your identity".

 

[Wildkraut]

Well whatever happened @TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ I personally almost never use it and for things I want to use it for they fail half the time (like telling it to unlock my smart lock and I get something like your device is failing to respond, sometimes after it unlocks). I use google and other things to search for info the search of Siri is dismal and mostly useless.

I would even like to turn that Siri crap off, but then CarPlay stops working.
Whenever i try to use Siri while driving, it takes more attention than just quick pressing a button.
Using Siri while driving makes driving more dangerous, specially when I get upset and start yelling at her because she didn't understand what I said.

 

[smaffei]

This type of dysfunction happens when corporations/organizations/governments become too big. Apple needs to diversify its corporate structure into smaller units. They are trying to do too many things under one "roof" and they end up running in circles at Apple Campus.

Yeah, but those drone campus flybys that are in every lackluster announcement… They're awesome!

 

[Jack Burton]

I only use Siri for weather (which it gives me correctly 75% of the time) and reminders/kitchen timers. It is, by far, my favorite for kitchen timers. I've given up asking it anything more complex.

 

[blahblahblah4321]

Abysmal. Siri is languishing and far behind. It's not just derided in the company, it's derided worldwide. If they pulled it, no one would care - voice control did all the things siri could do well. There's a whole rich smorgasbord of things LLM could do better than siri, including transcription. Having a good LLM with the headset makes a LOT more sense than air typing, which sounds gross.

 

[rjjacobson]

Makes sense! Question for you!

Would you deal with Siri half a** or deal with AI that might give mislead you and give you wrong information?

At the moment @TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ I am also a bit cautious about AI. And once that gets embedded in google and other search engines I will trust them less. I find at moment if i ask Siri to search for something it mostly finds useless information (limited database?) whereas google (which yeah I know is noting what I look for to sell my preferences so that is a problem) tends to find more stuff relevant to what I am looking for. So searching Siri is not even half a** more like 10 percent a** in my experience such I do not use it anymore it was a nice gimmick when started but seems to have mostly died in childhood to me

 

[smaffei]

This is what always happens in large tech companies. As they get bigger, innovation slows to a crawl because middle management sees it as a threat to its position. These rogue engineers are being disruptors (what they see it as).

Let's not forget that a rogue boss with a team of rogue engineers (flying a pirate flag) are what created the Macintosh. Everyone thought it was a joke project to keep Steve Jobs out of the company's day-to-day operations. And, it turned into something great.

 

[CJM]

Siri’s voice recognition is really good, I find. It just can’t do much.

Anyway, very interesting report. Apple’s rife internal feuds are a result of directionless leadership who want to maintain the status quo for fear of angering investors. And when the captain of the ship is solely interested in balancing books, he won’t get stuck into the nitty gritty of hammering out these vital details.

I don’t want to be all “but Steve would have…”, but to say he would be mad about OpenAI’s and now Microsoft’s lead would be an understatement.

 

[JerryDon]

Tim Cooks personally attempted to persuade the team to stay at Apple

What ever happened to grammar?

 

[Wildkraut]

Abysmal. Siri is languishing and far behind. It's not just derided in the company, it's derided worldwide. If they pulled it, no one would care - voice control did all the things siri could do well. There's a whole rich smorgasbord of things LLM could do better than siri, including transcription. Having a good LLM with the headset makes a LOT more sense than air typing, which sounds gross.

She also can't speak/switch multi-language on the fly.
Google can easely switch and understand requests of 3 active languages, probably even more.

 

[rjjacobson]

I would even like to turn that Siri crap off, but then CarPlay stops working.
Whenever i try to use Siri while driving, it takes more attention than just quick pressing a button.
Using Siri while driving makes driving more dangerous, specially when I get upset and start yelling at her because she didn't understand what I said.

Well forgot about CarPlay which I mostly use for google maps (which I like the travel display better than Apple Maps) but yeah answering a text is nice with Siri but never sure if it is Siri/CarPlay/my mazda connection to all that? It does work better than other “Siri” it seems

 

[ctk02]

the only time i use it is when i have my airpods in or im driving and tell siri to call so and so or text so and so but voice to text is very hit or miss.

 

[thebeans]

Because your $30 Alexa is subsidized by Amazon collecting and selling your data.

View attachment 2194361

Yes, that’s the reason for sure. Apple can’t afford to make their $1000 iPhone be able to have two simultaneous timers but Amazon can pay the tremendous amount of money it costs to program the device to run two timers at once because of the $.48 they get from advertisers for my data. Makes sense to me. Yes, I know they potentially get money for each user so not literally only $.48. But there’s no way I can believe that has anything to do with it. It’s a simple matter of Apple not being bothered to implement something useful that would cost essentially nothing and should have been there from the start.

 

[Verified Whiskey]

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

I for one am glad that they took this approach. The Apple fan base is largely concerned with privacy hence why they stick around. Sending every query back go home base is a big red flag for most.

Large language model AI is the future though, (in fact the present haha) so I hope they really get into gear and develop it.

Hopefully something in WWDC will show us that improvement.

 

[JerryDon]

Let’s be honest Siri is and always has been a complete POS. I dread using it, Amazon‘s Alexa for example, is light years ahead of Siri in terms of functionality.

Amen to that . . .

 

[8CoreWhore]

This is on Tim Cook. He's not a product guy. He's not a leader. He's a supply guy.

​

 

[Verified Whiskey]

Yes, that’s the reason for sure. Apple can’t afford to make their $1000 iPhone be able to have two simultaneous timers but Amazon can pay the tremendous amount of money it costs to program the device to run two timers at once because of the $.48 they get from advertisers for my data. Makes sense to me. Yes, I know they potentially get money for each user so not literally only $.48. But there’s no way I can believe that has anything to do with it. It’s a simple matter of Apple not being bothered to implement something useful that would cost essentially nothing and should have been there from the start.

Do you have a HomePod? You can do many multiple timers on it. And it’s hands free. iOS is the limitation there, not the actual iPhone.

 

[bladerunner88]

Would not be surprised to learn that Apple have had a parallel project underway for some time, in silent running mode, to develop a modern AI-based replacement for Siri.

Like how Mac OS X was secretly running on alternative silicon.

Or sometimes out of the Blue " You don't have the Timer App on your iPhone" Like What?

 

[Wildkraut]

Well forgot about CarPlay which I mostly use for google maps (which I like the travel display better than Apple Maps) but yeah answering a text is nice with Siri but never sure if it is Siri/CarPlay/my mazda connection to all that? It does work better than other “Siri” it seems

I can't reply to messages with Siri, because I'm in Germany but the OS and Siri is set to English, and most of the Messages i get is written in German, some of them also in Spanish or Portuguese.

When she reads my messages, it sounds like she is trying to read text written with WingDings.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Amazon‘s Alexa for example, is light years ahead of Siri in terms of functionality.

Buahahahahahahahahahahaha… thanks for the laugh.
Siri might be behind its competitors in many ways… But Amazon Alexa is worse.
Almost can rarely do what I ask it to do and, when it does, it’s usually accompanied by an ad.
“Why yes I’ll set your timer… also did you know that toilet paper is on sale at Amazon right now? How about I have some shipped to you.”
“Yes, I’ll turn on your lamp. By the way, check out all these lamps you can buy on Amazon, I’ve put one in your cart just because.”
It’s so frustrating, and it doesn’t matter what the task is.
Controlling smart home devices? Listening to music? Setting timers? Checking the weather?
70% of Alexa’s answers are closely followed by an Amazon advertisement, followed by the immediate panic that it heard me wrong and is now charging my card and shipping me crap I don’t need.

 

[drewsof07]

The single biggest thing that Apple needs to improve right now. And by a large margin. And a huge level of improvement. And yesterday. In fact, about 5 years ago. Please Apple, it's so embarrassing. And so frustrating. Get on top of this. This is a spectacular failure of leadership.

Siri doesn't understand "AND" requests, please try again 🤣🤣

 

[rjjacobson]

I can't reply to messages with Siri, because I'm in Germany but the OS and Siri is set to English, and most of the Messages i get is written in German, some of them also in Spanish or Portuguese.

When she reads my messages, it sounds like she is trying to read text written with WingDings.

Oh too bad, another flaw of Siri not working with other than English. Most of time when I reply Siri gets the text correct and I say send seldom have to correct so the voice recognition is pretty good as I think about that.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

This is not surprising. They don't see interactive AI as a priority until everyone else says it is. Apple has been playing it way too safe for years. I remember I wrote to Tim Cook years ago asking to integrate Chat Box technology into Siri. They missed a lot of opportunities to showcase true AI instead of a boring limited database like Siri. Their only focus is to put AI in the camera that you don't see or interact with. They didn't focus on Machine learning in the Keyboard to improve productivity, they didn't put AI in Siri. I'm sure this year in iOS 17 we won't see any new AI features when this year it's a hot thing.

Screen recognition is a newer feature for voiceover users on iOS and macOS that uses machine learning/AI to make apps without native VO support as accessible as possible.
There’s an AI Apple feature I use every single day.
Not sure why AI exclusively means “voice assistant” to most people, in my opinion, that’s probably the least interesting part of any AI development Apple could do.
Meanwhile, features like screen recognition and door detection truly show the possibilities of this type of technology, not “oh hey, Siri can set a timer three times faster than before, how incredible”.

 

[ignatius345]

To her defense I must say that speech-to-text (at least in Swedish) works great. She’s not that helpful otherwise except for setting timers and other mundane tasks.

Yeah, I keep Siri "in a box" conceptually as well, and mostly don't bother trying commands I don't already know it will get right. It still manages to screw up in baffling ways sometimes, but I end up yelling less if I keep my expectations very low.

Dictation has improved a lot in recent years, but I downloaded an AI transcription tool (that runs locally!) and it was shockingly good. It heated up my iMac for a few minutes and took a long time to run, but the accuracy was insane.

I'll accept Siri having limited capabilities versus all of my requests being sent to a "mothership" for processing, collection and sale.

Alexa may be more functional but I don't trust it (Amazon) at all from a privacy standpoint.

I don't think it has to be an either/or. I'd personally accept some server-side intervention if there were some strong safeguards built in. I don't trust Amazon or Google to do that, but I'd be more willing to trust Apple with it just based on knowing their profit model is selling hardware and services instead of ad tech data.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Apple executives are said to have dismissed proposals give ‌Siri‌ the ability to conduct extended back-and-forth conversations, claiming that the feature would be difficult to control and gimmicky.

Uh that’s Siri right now. Apple executives completely out of touch.

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

Yeah I remember them saying that and I was excited but I don’t notice any difference at all. Things that could work on device using the built in apps don’t work, and everything I’ve tried still requires web access. Maybe it’s better for accessibility being able to control a couple more on device functions by voice, but that’s not how they billed it.

This report makes perfect sense because we can tell from the outside that Siri is a mess caused by arrogance and neglect.