Apple: New Siri to catch chatbot competition
According to a media report, Apple also wants to massively redesign its voice assistant in iOS 18. Rumors about OpenAI collaborations are also on the rise.
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If you look at Apple's official presentation of the voice assistant Siri from October 2011, the AI system introduced with the iPhone 4S seems almost magical: It answers questions, sets appointments, searches for locations or plays music - and all without needing to know exact commands. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite like that in practice: even almost 13 years after the introduction of Siri, the software can be extremely annoying and you get the feeling that it has only advanced technically by an inch. Nevertheless, Apple will not abandon Siri altogether. Instead, the company plans to pimp it up with iOS 18. This is reported by the New York Times, citing informed sources.
Modified Siri "core" of Apple's AI strategy
Apple seems to want to draw inspiration from chatbot systems such as ChatGPT. Software boss Craig Federighi and Head of AI John Giannandrea spent several weeks personally working with the OpenAI system to identify the differences. It also became apparent that the Siri team has so far lacked the necessary resources to recruit really high-quality AI talent, the newspaper continues. But instead of abolishing the unloved Siri, Apple wants to continue on its basis. There are fears that the iPhone could become a "stupid stone" in view of the progress made by OpenAI & Co.
As previously reported, the company is relying on a combination of a large local language model on the iPhone and a server infrastructure based on its own chips. Rumors have recently surfaced again that Apple could also bring in help from OpenAI for more complex tasks. This would enable new functions, but would also give Apple an excuse should the AI company's technology provide strange or problematic answers. Similar negotiations are said to be taking place or at least have taken place with Google (Gemini), Baidu (Erniebot, only for China) and Anthropic (Claude). OpenAI has invited people to a live event on Monday, but it is unlikely that Apple will be present. Its AI strategy is much more likely to be presented directly at its own developer conference WWDC on June 10.
Voice assistant more like a chatbot
According to the New York Times, Apple has "several advantages" in the race for AI. These include the more than two billion devices on the market, as well as a leading chip team whose processors have long contained AI technology (Neural Engine), which is used for Face ID facial recognition, for example.
Tom Gruber, co-founder of Siri (which was itself an acquisition), who left Apple in 2018, says that Siri was always intended to work like a chatbot ("conversational interface") that understands language and context. "That's a tough problem." But now the technology is ready and it should be possible to make Siri much better. It's also not about Siri answering "everything", because that could mean trouble.
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