Maybe I’m the anomaly, but Siri has always worked very well for me for the basic reminder, calendar, weather conditions, currency exchange/math problems, calling, texting, “what song is this” and similar “life organization” tasks I throw at it. The only and only thing that drove me up a wall with Siri was working out the exact wording needed to get it to play my college radio station.
Finally, I discovered that “Play WPRK 91.5 FM on Tune In” was the magic combination of words that worked every time. If you left out any part of this phrase, it would mysteriously play an unrelated rap track of some kind, which was infuriating!
So I am in no way suggesting that Siri is somehow secretly better than the other vocal assistants in this area, or that the rest of you must be “using it wrong,” as I have no direct experience with any other vocal assistants. I just know that Siri works pretty well for me most of the time, but my requests are not very far-ranging and random, either.
That aside, I have noticed in the past few months that Siri is already getting “smarter.” On the rare occasion I need to venture outside of the categories above, I get a lot less “here’s something I found on the web” or some similar non-answer than I did before.
The other day, I idly asked “what is the chemical composition of steel?” and to my astonishment it gave me the correct one-sentence summary answer.
So at least SOME “AI” is already at work, and none of my Apple devices are recent, so it’s not just doing this on new items.
You're not an anomaly, it's just that there exists a very vocal group of negative nellies that rush into every Siri thread to denounce it cuz trolls gotta troll.
It’s great Siri works for you. But for a lot of users, including myself, it’s utterly useless. Basic stuff like asking driving directions to a nearby supermarket gets you to another continent, asking to turn off lights fails without explanation, sending a message is an exercise in frustration as Siri insists on calling, etc. Something that works one day completely fails for the next two weeks, etc etc. Appel definitely needs to completely rethink Siri.
Siri’s architecture is so dated, and its reputation so bad, Apple should introduce its new assistant as a separate entity, with a new name, that operates an alongside Siri. Call it a beta, and let those people who are still attached to Siri continue to use it while the beta proves itself. Then send Siri to a farm in the country with plenty of room to play…
Maybe I’m the anomaly, but Siri has always worked very well for me for the basic reminder, calendar, weather conditions, currency exchange/math problems, calling, texting, “what song is this” and similar “life organization” tasks I throw at it. The only and only thing that drove me up a wall with Siri was working out the exact wording needed to get it to play my college radio station.
Finally, I discovered that “Play WPRK 91.5 FM on Tune In” was the magic combination of words that worked every time. If you left out any part of this phrase, it would mysteriously play an unrelated rap track of some kind, which was infuriating!
So I am in no way suggesting that Siri is somehow secretly better than the other vocal assistants in this area, or that the rest of you must be “using it wrong,” as I have no direct experience with any other vocal assistants. I just know that Siri works pretty well for me most of the time, but my requests are not very far-ranging and random, either.
That aside, I have noticed in the past few months that Siri is already getting “smarter.” On the rare occasion I need to venture outside of the categories above, I get a lot less “here’s something I found on the web” or some similar non-answer than I did before.
The other day, I idly asked “what is the chemical composition of steel?” and to my astonishment it gave me the correct one-sentence summary answer.
So at least SOME “AI” is already at work, and none of my Apple devices are recent, so it’s not just doing this on new items.
I don't think your experience is anomalous. It certainly isn't universal, but it's not unusual.
Like you, Siri mostly does what I tell it to do, but also like you, I'm not asking it to do much of anything that Apple hasn't previously advertised or demonstrated it doing. It makes calls, sends messages, sets timers, alarms, and reminders, reports the weather, turns on and off my lights, and plays my music (not Apple Music, just my local iTunes library. I've even used it to translate simple phrases to other languages. It doesn't work flawlessly, but it works the vast majority of the time, and when it doesn't work, it's often because of other factors, such as Home devices not responding (which happens often after power outages), the internet being slow (happened a lot when I was still with Spectrum), or other factors not under the device's control.
The plethora of complaints about Siri are evidence it's not perfect by any means, but for my simple use cases, it's worked pretty darned well.
So, what features will these LLM algorithms enable? The answers are always vague.
They can summarize emails, so I would need to read them anymore, and just read a one sentence summary. Similarly true for web pages, or anything involving reading. They provide document templates based on inputted materials. I presume a Swift code generator based on prompts will be coming.
Hmm, the response from website advertisers will be interesting. There are many instances where I'd like to extract the 0.1% of a website that is actual content versus the ad-load that takes up 99.9% of the data and 99.999% of the computing power. That's a want, but I never use ad-blockers and decide to either read the website as is, or ignore it.
I firmly believe that based on what's been reported to date surrounding the current state of Apple's own GenAI, the "new Siri" will have OpenAI driving it on the backend. It's not out of the question that some version of Google's Gemini will also be working in the background for other iPhone features.
Apple is all about GenerativeAI at the moment, along with every other tech.
So, what features will these LLM algorithms enable? The answers are always vague.
They can summarize emails, so I would need to read them anymore, and just read a one sentence summary. Similarly true for web pages, or anything involving reading. They provide document templates based on inputted materials. I presume a Swift code generator based on prompts will be coming.
Hmm, the response from website advertisers will be interesting. There are many instances where I'd like to extract the 0.1% of a website that is actual content versus the ad-load that takes up 99.9% of the data and 99.999% of the computing power. That's a want, but I never use ad-blockers and decide to either read the website as is, or ignore it.
I firmly believe that based on what's been reported to date surrounding the current state of Apple's own GenAI, the "new Siri" will have OpenAI driving it on the backend. It's not out of the question that some version of Google's Gemini will also be working in the background for other iPhone features.
Apple is all about GenerativeAI at the moment, along with every other tech.
Yeah, but what are the actual features? How will they be useful to me?
Knowing Apple, that doesn’t matter any sense. They went from charging for OSes, to charging a small amount, to giving them away for free. Xcode is free whereas MS Visual Studio (not Code) has a charge. iWork Suite is free. etc..
I would agree with Chasm's comments, all this "Siri" bashing is out of date. For complex text messages, Siri gets it right 99% of the time, and I can compose long emails with excellent accuracy. All this BS about "Hey Siri, tell me the most home runs by a team with a name starting with B" or some garbage query , who cares. For most basic tasks , that cover most situations, and that you need Siri to help with ( especially when driving) Siri does a really excellent job.
Not sure if I would agree that it is out of date. I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max (I metion this for context that my phone is more than capable) and just yesterday I asked Siri five times, no joke *five* times, to set a timer and she couldn't. My phone was less than three feet away. I finally just set it myself.
I would agree with Chasm's comments, all this "Siri" bashing is out of date. For complex text messages, Siri gets it right 99% of the time, and I can compose long emails with excellent accuracy. All this BS about "Hey Siri, tell me the most home runs by a team with a name starting with B" or some garbage query , who cares. For most basic tasks , that cover most situations, and that you need Siri to help with ( especially when driving) Siri does a really excellent job.
Not sure if I would agree that it is out of date. I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max (I metion this for context that my phone is more than capable) and just yesterday I asked Siri five times, no joke *five* times, to set a timer and she couldn't. My phone was less than three feet away. I finally just set it myself.
Comments
Apple is all about GenerativeAI at the moment, along with every other tech.
So, yeah nah.