Based on what the company has been doing for the past decade, from software to hardware to retail, the above probably describes what has been happening in every department in Apple, to differing degrees.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Report Details Turmoil Behind Apple's AI Efforts, 'Siri X,' and Headset Voice Controls
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Apple has very little AI chops but that’s okay because that’s not their core business. I mean, look at ChatGPT and Bing+ChatGPT integration. I just read a report that Google recently gained market share in Search and Alphabets earnings showed that Search hasn’t been impacted at all. If Apple tomorrow added ChatGPT-like LLM in their products, it would barely increase sales. It’s not worth the R&D investment to improve Siri.
Yes. No reply.Have you let Apple know?
Also, I think google is working on it. Afaik, it looks like it. And it will change everything.
I don’t need or even want (at this juncture) Siri to be a LLM.
But being much more useful, and working reliably, would be nice.
But being much more useful, and working reliably, would be nice.
I hate to tell you this apple, but Bixby is better than Siri.
That's bad.
That's bad.
Well to be fair, the gap between ChatGPT and all the other traditional speech assistants is enormous.
Agreed.
That Siri is seemingly on the back-burner, I think reflects that Apple sees the UX as primarily revolving around screens and interacting with said screens with input devices - fingers, trackpads and pens etc.
Whereas Chat-GPT is showing us that the future of UX will take us right back to HAL-2000 (although hopefully les murderous) where the UX is simply talking (voice/signing) to a device.
So I'm wondering whether the increasingly intricate complexity of the UI on MacOS and iOS might seem quite quaint to future generations when you simply tell your device what you want to do and it does it for you.
And so perhaps the vision that Kubrick had of how the Discovery worked (there's barely any controls) might be more prescient.
It actually sounds like the leadership structure is the problem here, with the design team being too uncompromising in its search for perfect responses and accurate information to the point where engineers can’t get a minimum viable product shipped to start improving Siri. They need someone who can make an executive decision on a development strategy that works and the power to make the team stop flip flopping to something else.
just gonna leave this here…
Killed by Google
Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.
killedbygoogle.com
Agree with you that it's sensible for Apple to be conservative around things like LLMs.
And no doubt there are lots of lawsuits waiting to happen around user data privacy re. it being used for training and whether (allegedly) LLMs slurping up nyc.com, wikipedia.com etc. for inputs and training really is 'fair use'.
However, I think that Siri is so poor it should've always been an optional beta that had to be manually enabled - even if whether it should've been released at all.
Certainly it should not have been centre-stage at several WWDCs, with Apple proclaiming that it is even more capable and 'intelligent'...
...Only for users to find that it's only still marginally better and still mostly useless.
Fire the entire team, hire the best people you can find in AI. and build something new.
Umm… the big corporation being referenced in the 1984 commercial was IBM. MS was not a big company yet other than selling MS BASIC, Word, and licensing MS-DOS to IBM.
Apple has painted itself into a privacy corner with Siri. ChatGPT and similar services are eating Siri for lunch. Either Apple steps on the AI train, or they’ll end up as Nokia. It might in fact already be too late. These developments are going FAST, and I doubt Apple has the flexibility to pivot Siri fast enough. The Apple ecosystem will have to fight ‘magical’ AI supported ecosystems that truly seem to understand the user… and that user will not care if that AI is on device, and also will not care about privacy if the AI is powerful enough.
I'm really hoping Apple eventually becomes embarrassed enough to do something about it.
Siri works ok for controlling smart home devices (opening shades, turning on/off lights, etc).
But the other day I asked Siri what time Best Buy opened (it was a Sunday). I got the response, "You can see what I found on the web by opening your iPhone." I tried the same question with Google Assistant, and it responded "Best Buy opens today at 11 am."
Come on Apple, you can do better.
Siri works ok for controlling smart home devices (opening shades, turning on/off lights, etc).
But the other day I asked Siri what time Best Buy opened (it was a Sunday). I got the response, "You can see what I found on the web by opening your iPhone." I tried the same question with Google Assistant, and it responded "Best Buy opens today at 11 am."
Come on Apple, you can do better.
Apple could see itself become the next Blackberry if they're not very careful.
And before anyone says "can't happen" -- well, that's what everyone thought about Blackberry. Until it did happen. And almost overnight.
Absolutely, and it's the reason I finally broke down and went from a "HomeKit" powered home with Siri to investing in multiple Echo Dots around my house and switching everything over to Alexa compatibility.
That said? At this point, I'd welcome Siri sticking to providing only human-curated answers to questions and NOT chasing the ChatGPT thing. The key, though? Apple needs to massively increase the effort put towards that end. Having a team of 20 people tasked with it is horribly insufficient.
Sure, and I really hope apple will be first with it. But I doubt that.just gonna leave this here…
“Google is working on it, and it’s going to change the world” is something that is said a lot.Killed by Google
Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.
The good thing now is that ChatGPT has totally changed the AI game, so Apple isn't really behind anymore. Now everyone's behind.
Local processing is just FINE if you limit it to an appropriate sub-set of features. I think you're correct here except the local mode doesn't have to be a "subpar" experience at all. It just needs to set reasonable boundaries and work well within them.
With local processing, I'd expect it to accept only voice commands that control local features. I want to be able to tell it to do things like reboot/restart my iPhone or launch any application installed on it. Things like setting timers or alarms would obviously still work in this scenario too. Should be able to dictate things to type into applications or make new calendar appointments. I'd even think it should be able to join a new wifi network by voice command, if I wanted. But asking what the score was of last night's ball game? Probably something you'd leave out since it requires a working Internet connection to do external lookups and fetch an answer.
That’s some lame click bait article.
Bing and GPT are not in a consumer ready state.
We know all the terrible problems with this janky AI.
Apple has Siri integrated into services and devices that are much more reliable than Microsoft and Google terrible products.
We can wait until Siri is reliable before they make it consumer available.
The first place it will appear is as an Xcode assist.