The iconic digital assistant could be getting an upgrade soon with hopes of understanding us better and fixing privacy potholes.
Apple has been hinting at a big announcement for Siri at WWDC 2024, their annual global developers’ conference.
One of the problems with Siri is that it regularly lacks intelligence which Apple hopes to tackle in the upcoming iOS 18 update. The tech giant plans on using a mix of its own machine learning technology and AI models from other companies.
Consequently, Siri could get a complete makeover, making it smarter, more helpful, and more private than ever before.
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For one, Siri could also do a better job at listening. Sometimes you say things as clearly as possible yet Siri still mishears and does a completely different action. Apple hopes to improve the voice assistant's capabilities
in understanding and responding more accurately.
'Up to now, conversational features like Siri are notorious for false positives. They assume intent, and then respond to the question they think you're asking,' wrote Adrienne Hunter Wong, lead designer for AI products at Khan Academy.
'They also have a difficult time completing requests if you don't ask them in a specific way, with rigid language - if you forget that the name of your grocery list in Todoist is 'Groceries' (plural), Siri won't know what you're asking it to do if you ask it to add eggs to your 'Grocery' list.'
The AI-powered Siri is reported to come with a significant boost to the microphone as well as an improved signal-to-noise ratio, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Another challenge that Apple has been trying to tackle is privacy. They have been developing ways for Siri to process requests directly on users' iPhones and iPads, without transferring data to the cloud.
However, more details are waiting to be confirmed such as there's still uncertainty as to whether the new and improved Siri will be available on previous iPhone models.
For instance, some of these generative AI features might be exclusive to iPhone 16 models, which are rumoured to be powered by a Neural Engine with 'significantly more cores.'
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman hinted at iOS design changes to some in the 'near future' also as he reported Apple's senior management describing iOS 18 as 'ambitious and compelling' with 'major new features and designs.'