Better AI Siri: Did prompt injections slow down Apple's schedule?

Following Apple's postponement of a "better personalized Siri", the guesswork about the exact reasons has begun. While the US financial news agency Bloomberg reported that several senior employees at Apple were not satisfied with the quality of the improvements so far, a different theory is circulating in developer circles.

Developer Simon Willison, for example, suggested that Apple may have encountered a major problem with so-called prompt injections. So far, none of the major AI development companies have been able to fully solve this challenge. In the case of Siri, however, the negative effects for the user could be considerable.

Fundamental change needed?

A prompt injection is a type of hack that overrides existing instructions from the manufacturer to the artificial intelligence. This could allow access to private data such as contacts and messages or trigger actions in the system.

As Apple cannot fall back on functioning solutions from others, the problem may be much more profound than the postponement to next year suggests. If Apple has not already found a solution, it will have to achieve a fundamental change in large language models – In this context, there has already been speculation that there could be a complete restart in the efforts to improve Siri.

Criticism of the early announcement

In the meantime, there has been growing criticism online that Apple may have announced its better voice assistant too early at the World Developer Conference WWDC in June 2024. On the other hand, the pressure on Apple had been growing for months leading up to that presentation and industry observers saw the company under pressure to show how it intends to deal with the trending topic of AI.

Among the capabilities of a better Siri, knowledge of personal context should play a role. The voice assistant should also be able to view screen content and interact with the user's apps. Apple wants to achieve all of this with improved data protection, which should be outstanding in the industry.

(mki)