Could the future of Siri be bright? It would seem that way with Apple forming a dedicated team focused on Artificial Intelligence and Conversational AI. Conversational AI could have a significant impact on the usability of Siri, with Apple reportedly spending millions per day on the platform.
The news came from The Information, where Apple, under the leadership of John Giannandrea, has formed a team focus on Conversational AI four years ago. It would appear, thanks to ChatGPT, that plans for improved Artificial Intelligence in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, are moving forward at a faster pace.
Apple has been expanding its computing budget for building artificial intelligence to millions of dollars a day. One of its goals is to develop features such as one that allows iPhone customers to use simple voice commands to automate tasks involving multiple steps, according to people familiar with the effort. The technology, for instance, could allow someone to tell the Siri voice assistant on their phone to create a GIF using the last five photos they’ve taken and text it to a friend. Today, an iPhone user has to manually program the individual actions.
It is possible that we will see some of the benefits of this work in iOS 17, but likely will see the bulk of it in iOS 18. Some of the improvements to Siri could be made over-the-air, but Apple will want to make sure that Siri has enough on-board AI to process requests for privacy’s sake.
It is exciting to think that Siri could, finally, be useful. While Siri is in all of the platforms from Apple, it has never been the best personal assistant. I, personally, leverage Google Assistant the vast majority of the time I need the use of a PA on my devices.