Apple will reveal its AI cards on June 10 at WWDC, and Siri is surely going to be a key component. Generally, people want Siri to get good. You can’t just replace Siri intelligence with generative AI, however, but the two technologies make a powerful combination. What I want to see from an AI-infused Siri is actually simple.
Siri as it exists today is actually good at certain specific things.
I use Siri daily to send messages, make calls, create reminders, add things to my shopping list, play music, control lights, check the weather, check sports scores, start navigation, make voice memos, and much more.
Those are all rock solid. Siri is less reliable at summoning information. My kids ask me knowledge questions all the time, and Siri should be the smoothest way to find the answer. I know in my bones that Siri is hit or miss on finding answers.
A simple test for Siri in iOS 18 is if it can eliminate punting to the web for search results as the answer. That’s where large language models excel. LLMs can be like hyper focused search engines that provide answers and not search results.
If Siri can provide more answers and less redirection, I’ll consider that a solid start.
Some other thoughts on this topic:
- Siri is good about sourcing information when it does provide answers.
- LLMs, on the other hand, will provide plausible answers that may be inaccurate.
- Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant competed on feature parity before; now the competition is over how best integrates generative AI.
- Humane, the startup behind the Ai Pin hardware, has shown how generative AI should work with a voice assistant.
- However, Ai Pin’s limited capabilities around actions shows where Siri + AI can excel.
- Separately, the Rabbit R1 bespoke AI hardware has a different approach to actions that looks competitive.
In sum, throwing out Siri and starting over from scratch is not a serious solution. Instead, Siri should maintain its functionality while using generative AI to patch its weak spots.
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