iOS 17.4 beta has signs of an AI-improved Siri ahead of WWDC 2024

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
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Apple could announce an AI-powered version of Siri as soon as June, and there are signs inside the iOS 17.4 beta that it exists.

Apple is testing its in-house Chatbot Siri against ChatGPT
Apple is testing its in-house Chatbot Siri against ChatGPT



Apple has yet to release an equivalent to ChatGPT's artificial intelligence tools, but that doesn't mean it's not coming. The company has allegedly invested $1 billion in adding AI to Siri.

9to5Mac has uncovered code in the first beta of iOS 17.4 that suggests that Apple is still working on a new version of Siri. Interestingly enough, there are references to OpenAI within the code.

OpenAI's ChatGPT does not seem to power Siri's artificial intelligence features. Instead, it exists as a yardstick for Apple to compare its own Large Language Model (LLM) against.

Apple appears to be testing four different AI models, including AjaxGPT, its in-house LLM. The code shows that Apple is testing two versions of AjaxGPT, one processed on-device and one not.

9to5Mac also reports that Apple is testing a model dubbed FLAN-T5.

In early January, there were rumors that Apple was planning to integrate its generative AI technology into Siri and other services, with an announcement expected at the 2024 Worldwide Developer Conference.


Rumor Score: Likely

Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 2,011member
    This all makes sense.

    Watch for Siri to become the first truly useful implementation of "generative AI," using sources of information that are reliable and actually paying for it. For instance, if you already have an Apple News subscription, Siri will be able to summarize the news for you in a morning briefing, using information from your subscribed content, and then interact with you to select and bookmark articles for further reading. 
    Alex1Ncoolfactorwilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 7
    thttht Posts: 5,452member
    Waiting to see if these chat bots are an investment bubble or for real. There needs to be fact-checking, answer verification, and other sundry things in them, as well as anti-poisoning techniques if the replies are crowdsourced or amalgamated from the Internet.

    Sounds great for well-defined and determinant problems, so it will have its uses.
    Alex1Nwatto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 7
    Alex1NAlex1N Posts: 132member
    I hope that this will improve the accuracy of Siri’s responses, although I won’t be holding my breath. We’re already getting a few Siri queries when we’ve said something that was interpretable by Siri as ‘Siri’ after the new ‘standalone’ word reaction was released in iOS 17. I’m not sure how much AI implementation is going to sort that out. Getting Siri do actually do the simple things on the phone that I ask it to would be nice. Maybe I mumble too much…
    edited January 26 williamlondonbyronlwatto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 7
    unbeliever2unbeliever2 Posts: 89member
    It’s hard to imagine that Siri could possibly get worse, but hopefully this will be an improvement.
    williamlondonbyronl
  • Reply 5 of 7
    coolfactorcoolfactor Posts: 2,245member
    It’s hard to imagine that Siri could possibly get worse, but hopefully this will be an improvement.

    Siri is great in _many_ ways. But plenty of room for improvement.

    It looks like the article title may have been updated?

    Siri is already "AI-powered" in the sense that it's powered by machine-learning tech, a subset of AI.

    Generative AI is a whole new category that is bringing us closer to what Knowledge Navigator embodied back in the 80's.

    I envisioned such "helpful agents" 26 years ago. We're finally getting there.

    I foresee a massively upgraded Siri by end of year. 
    edited January 26 ihatescreennameswilliamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 7
    OnPartyBusinessOnPartyBusiness Posts: 88member
    I foresee a massively upgraded Siri by end of year. 
    I truly hope you are right.  Apple didn’t even make mention of series 10th birthday a couple of years ago. Happy to believe that nothing would ever be done to it.  They were content to let it languish.  ChatGPT et al have forced Apples hand now. I’m glad of it.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 7 of 7
    thttht Posts: 5,452member
    OnPartyBusiness said:
    I foresee a massively upgraded Siri by end of year. 
    I truly hope you are right.  Apple didn’t even make mention of series 10th birthday a couple of years ago. Happy to believe that nothing would ever be done to it.  They were content to let it languish.  ChatGPT et al have forced Apples hand now. I’m glad of it.
    Don’t get your hopes up. 

    Natural language interfaces won’t be like in the movies, where the smart agent understands precisely what you mean, responds in exactly the way you want and always has correct information. 

    Smart agents are only good in constrained problems with properly vetted data. Like, a help system for how to do things on your iPhone or Mac, which is mostly determinant. A help system for programming. Setting up documents.

    The more open ended something is, the less useful it will become, the less accurate it becomes. For these open ended chatbots, the war is just getting started, and there’s going to be continuous chatbots feeding themselves, which is going to cause… issues. There needs to be a lot of work to make these things accurate. 
    watto_cobra
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