Apple will reportedly focus on amping up Siri’s conversational skills as part of iOS 18’s generative AI enhancements.
According to a report by the New York Times, Apple executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea tested ChatGPT for weeks before admitting that the AI chatbot made Siri look dated. The company has apparently made the decision that the iPhone’s virtual assistant could benefit greatly from the large language model (LLM) concepts that support OpenAI’s chatbot. Apple will reportedly introduce a new Siri that is powered by GenAI on June 10 at its WWDC keynote.
Siri’s past struggles with understanding the context of queries and carrying on ongoing conversations have been resolved by more recent AI systems like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Since its launch in 2011, Siri has not seen a significant update. As we saw at Apple’s iPad announcement event earlier this week, the redesign of Siri is part of a larger initiative within the company to advance its AI capabilities.
Anticipated enhancements include a more conversational and enhanced Siri, as well as the capacity to leverage context from one request to help with understanding another (For example, the Times states that “if someone asked for the weather in San Francisco and then said, ‘What about New York?’ that user wanted another forecast”) This points to the superior conversational abilities of AI chatbots like ChatGPT that can guage that the second query was a follow up to the first one.
As mentioned in the Times article, this would be Apple’s largest overhaul in nearly ten years. The possibility that iOS’s AI competitors will eventually take the lead in the smartphone software market is apparently one of Apple’s biggest fears. Therefore, the company’s ability to successfully integrate these generative AI systems without jeopardizing the fundamental experiences that Apple users expect from the company will be critical to its success.
Regarding the ongoing discussion between Apple and Google about using the Gemini chatbot in iOS 18, Bloomberg has confirmed that an agreement has not been reached as of yet. However, the article has reported that “Apple Inc. has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the startup’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence features to its devices.”
- Code Smarter, Not Harder: 5 Free AI Tools You Need to Know! - January 22, 2025
- Meta Takes on CapCut with Its New Video Editing App ‘Edits’ - January 20, 2025
- NovaSky Debuts Affordable Open-Source AI Model for Advanced Reasoning - January 14, 2025
