Search the Web With a Phone Call Using This New Arc Search Feature

[topmounter]

Wow this is amazing if it can tell you the current time and temperature Tim Kook will hype this at WWDC as a reason to buy the latest iphone.

 

[josselinco]

The vibe in the top comments is astonishing. This is a cool idea, cool execution, doesn't harm anyone.

 

[subjonas]

They called it a phone call, we're just making fun of it for an obvious reason. Most people probably use headphones anyway, so this feature seems completely unnecessary.

The person I replied to seemed to think it was really a phone call with actual dialing.
I don’t think most people have headphones with them all the time. And even they did, there would still be a huge number who don’t, plus bt headphone batteries die, and if you already have your phone in hand, it’s quicker to just put it to your ear rather than fish out your headphones and put them on. So it’s still useful.

 

[kc9hzn]

I like the concept, I think it could be useful. Speaking is faster than typing, especially iOS typing, and it‘s good for eyes-free information look up (hands-free too if wearing an earpiece) if you want to keep your head up and aware of your surroundings, and you don’t want people to hear or make out your “conversation“—only you would hear the voice assistant and you can probably talk low enough into the mic that others won’t be able to hear or at least make out your query.

But it hinges on two things: 1) it needs an easy eyes-free shortcut button/voice command/something to activate immediately, and 2) data privacy, for me anyway. I probably wouldn’t trust any old third party company so I’d only use it if it was an Apple feature. Actually, maybe there already is some Siri setting where you can listen to her through the phone earpiece. She would just need to an upgrade to be able to hold a conversation.

I mean, you’ve already been able to do voice searches on the web for years. At the very least, voice dictation has been a system-wide iOS feature for nearly 10 years now. And you could always use voice dictation to enter an AI search. The only thing that’s really different about this is the phone call-like UI.

As an aside, I don’t think I understand the concept of “AI search”? Is it AI generation or is it web search? The two seem like diametrically opposed concepts to me. The former is AI processing of web results to generate an answer (subject to the same limitations of AI hallucinations as any other AI generation tool, as well as the same limitations of Google’s quick info boxes), while the latter is an algorithmic listing of website results. I don’t really see how you can do the latter with “AI” (or rather, I don’t see how that would look any different from the user’s perspective, after all, Google is almost certainly already using learning algorithms in Google search)*.

In other words, I reckon AI is being used here mostly as a marketing buzzword.

 

[subjonas]

I mean, you’ve already been able to do voice searches on the web for years. At the very least, voice dictation has been a system-wide iOS feature for nearly 10 years now. And you could always use voice dictation to enter an AI search. The only thing that’s really different about this is the phone call-like UI.

As an aside, I don’t think I understand the concept of “AI search”? Is it AI generation or is it web search? The two seem like diametrically opposed concepts to me. The former is AI processing of web results to generate an answer (subject to the same limitations of AI hallucinations as any other AI generation tool, as well as the same limitations of Google’s quick info boxes), while the latter is an algorithmic listing of website results. I don’t really see how you can do the latter with “AI” (or rather, I don’t see how that would look any different from the user’s perspective, after all, Google is almost certainly already using learning algorithms in Google search)*.

In other words, I reckon AI is being used here mostly as a marketing buzzword.

Yeah voice prompting has been around, and of course so has the smart assistant. The difference here, in addition to the phone call-like UI, is hopefully that the smart assistant is smarter. But even if it was just non-AI Siri as is, I think it would be useful in some situations to interact with her like a phone call.

I agree, it’s not really a search. I believe it is called “generative AI”, and our initiation of it is called a “prompt” or maybe a “query”.

AI is definitely used as a buzzword here and everywhere these days. To me it just seems like it’s regular old ML (machine learning) maybe applied on a bigger scope in various applications, but I suppose the terms are interchangeable and AI sounds hotter. Also I suppose it’s a more appropriate term in an application where it’s actually trying to mimic a human.

 

[GoodTimeNotALongTime]

The vibe in the top comments is astonishing. This is a cool idea, cool execution, doesn't harm anyone.

This is Macrumors. Surely you didn’t expect better? 😉