Report: Revamped Siri to Be at the Core of Apple's New AI Strategy

[victorvictoria]

User: "Hey Siri, play my favourite song on Apple Music"
New Siri: "Here are the five nearest Italian restaurants, would you like me to translate into French?"

First thing I turn off on any new Apple device.

If that's how you feel, why are you buying Apple devices?

 

[iBreatheApple]

“making Siri better at handling tasks such as setting timers, creating calendar appointments, adding items to Reminders”

You mean what Siri could do 5 years ago and now barely can? This is hardly the AI-infused Siri of the next generation I was hoping for.

Let’s hope this article is not representative of what we have to look forward to. People are going to have meltdowns if this is an accurate summary.

 

[BGPL]

They would be wise to drop Siri and start with something new. Most people have lost confidence with Siri and it only brings a timed-out, deprecated feeling when I hear that name. She had a good run. Also, I'd like them to call it Bob instead. I'd much rather say "Hey Bob" or "hey Bobby" out loud when I'm in my car than say "Hey Siri".

 

[klasma]

More ram in the iPhone? So it's going to have more than the baseline Mac's now?

Nope, only 8 GB according to rumors. 12 GB for the Pros next year.

 

[MrENGLISH]

Siri has become such a joke anymore. If Apple truly does introduce a revolutionary new AI based virtual assistant, they should probably give it a new name.

 

[cocky jeremy]

They need to kill the Siri brand. I learned to hate talking to “Siri” and never want to again.

Siri was fun for like a week when it first came out. Never really saw a use for it. I can just as easily open an app or Google something for myself.

 

[ApAx]

A 1st gen Echo Dot from 2016 made Siri look antiquated...

I don't necessarily need or want an AI-enabled Siri. Just a web-aware Siri that runs HomeKit devices reliably.

 

[citysnaps]

The updates just announced for FCPX and Logic Pro are promising that Apple is starting to realize they are way behind. They need to resurrect Aperture.

That will never happen. Adobe LR has been so far ahead of the curve in image processing for a long time, with outstanding features regularly added in updates.

Apple was smart getting out of that business long ago. No way Apple could ever compete with Adobe whose sole business is about image science (with Adobe leadership and founders (both PhDs) being experts in the field).

Back around 2007 I gave both Aperture and Lightroom a good evaluation. Aperture was clunky in comparison - especially in the way it handled non-destructive edits.

Sure glad I went with LR as by the time Apple left Aperture, I already tens of thousands processed in LR, many that I frequently re-edit/process years later.

 

[sw1tcher]

Addicted to the sweet App Store revenues and margins.

Apple is a publicly held for profit corporation. America is a capitalist nation. What's your beef here?

Apple's fear of App Store revenues taking a hit lead to Apple falling behind on AI. Now they're scrambling to catch up and as a result they may have to partner up with an AI company

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Their focus on protecting the App Store made them lose focus elsewhere.

I find it funny that you feel the need to come in to defend Apple and Tim Cook.

 

[victorvictoria]

People always use this argument, that we are not better than Tim Cook. But you don't need to be a chef to know that the food sucks. Customers can judge from the perspective of whether they are getting what they want, whether they are happy with the products, services, prices. Come on, don't lower yourself like this. Tim Cook may have done more than you, but you don't need to keep thinking he is better and smarter than you in every way. Don't think that about yourself.

You've made your point. You are NOT better than Tim Cook. Your food analogy is torturous. Customers are the ultimate judges of a product's desirability. And those judges have awarded Apple $3 trillion stars. And counting. Is he a better person than you or me? No. Is he a better manager? That answers itself, since we're both wasting time to no avail right now, while he's at work running Apple.

 

[dannyyankou]

So it's not because they want a better experience. It's because they don't want to lose control and want as tight a grip on customers experience as possible.

 

[MrENGLISH]

If that's how you feel, why are you buying Apple devices?

I seriously doubt most people are buying Apple devices specifically for using Siri.

 

[klasma]

Apple is a publicly held for profit corporation. America is a capitalist nation. What's your beef here?

Your interpretation of capitalism, would be my guess.

 

[Tagbert]

So that means they thought Siri was state of the art until ChatGPT came along? Would explain a lot but I am at a loss for words. If that was true, it would be like they were living in a walled garden where nothing remotely critical could reach them improving their „already perfect“ software/assistant.

I am screaming/cursing at Siri half of the time and by now I have given up and I’m only using it for setting timers, starting workouts and a WhatsApp/iMessage here and there…

Siri came as a package when they bought which they bought from Nuance. It was built using an older-style AI that tried to infer the user’s intent in requests. Google did something similar but their intent analysis was better. Amazon went with a simpler, command “recipe” approach that met a lot of people‘s needs. Neither one was vastly better than Siri but they were enough better that Siri got a reputation as the slow kid in class.

It turned out that the codebase for Siri was too rigid and convoluted to feasibly enhance. I’ve worked on code based like that and usually argued to start from scratch. That can be hard to justify if there is no competitive pressure to really make the product better.

Apple seems to have seen Siri as good enough and the competition only marginally better. It wasn’t a priority to make major improvements and the technology was limiting.

Now we have much more flexible and accurate interactions with LLMs. If Apple can do a brain transplant of a streamlined LLM into Siri that will be game changing.

 

[ethanwa79]

Nothing but good news here.

BIG BUT….

Apple needs to blow it out of the park. Without deep integration from Day 1 of iOS 18, they will fall further and further behind. Siri needs to ACTUALLY be amazing.

 

[RedWeasel]

They need to kill the Siri brand. I learned to hate talking to “Siri” and never want to again.

Yeah it’s become a bit like good old Clippy from Microsoft Office.

 

[klasma]

“making Siri better at handling tasks such as setting timers, creating calendar appointments, adding items to Reminders”

You mean what Siri could do 5 years ago and now barely can? This is hardly the AI-infused Siri of the next generation I was hoping for.

Let’s hope this article is not representative of what we have to look forward to. People are going to have meltdowns if this is an accurate summary.

It’s not feasible to run a ChatGPT/Gemini equivalent on-device, so it seems they are shooting for functions with a more limited scope here.

 

[Rogifan]

The company is working on making ‌Siri‌ better at handling tasks such as setting timers, creating calendar appointments, adding items to Reminders, and summarizing text.

I welcome a better Siri but if this is Apple’s big AI push it’s pretty embarrassing. Siri should have been world class at this a long time ago.

 

[Tagbert]

This reminds me of what happened to Microsoft when Netscape was introduced. Microsoft believed it was way behind the curve and operating systems based on Netscape could supplant Windows. Though behind, they built their own browser and leveraged their installed base to come to dominate browsers on the PC. Apple has a huge advantage once they release their AI. It will be available to over 1 billion users instantaneously. Plus, they can include it for free. Even if one has something that is arguably better it is tough to compete with free.

Even within Apple’s products you have a good parallel.

When web browsers came out, Apple didn’t have one and people were wondering if it would lose out because of that. Apple took a fork of an open source project, KHTML , and rebuilt it into Webkit and launched Safari from that. that spawned most of the browsers we have today.

 

[Rogifan]

Addicted to the sweet App Store revenues and margins.

Don’t let Phil, Eddy or the bean counters anywhere near this project.

 

[Polinsky]

View attachment 2376690
Let's gooooo -- WWDC is gonna be dope.

What does that even mean? Dope at WWDC?

 

[RedWeasel]

äAnyone else think Siri has been a bigger dumpster fire than more high-profile fails like Apple Maps?

At least Apple Maps is working quite well now.

 

[Schiappablanca]

With iOS 18 Siri will say "I don't understand" in the form of Shapespeare's sonnet.

 

[RedWeasel]

I think they should rebrand it Jim, but with the following interaction rules:

• All prompts are initiated with ”Dammit Jim…”
• That’s it.

”Dammit Jim, what the hell is the weather doing today?!”
”Dammit Jim, where are my keys?!”
”Dammit Jim, he’s out of his Vulcan mind!”

I‘d actually have them get Mila Kunis for the voice and call her Meg.

So when the answers are still as useless as they are today, I can just use „shut up Meg!“ to stop the conversation.

 

[dumastudetto]

This is Apple's Internet Explorer moment. Microsoft crushed Netscape, and Apple will crush OpenAI and Google.