Siri

When Apple Intelligence launches later this year, it will be exclusive to these iPhones, Macs, and iPads. Even features like the new Siri won’t be coming to modern products like the HomePod, Watch, or Vision Pro.

The upgraded Siri’s absence from the HomePod is especially disappointing, and suggested a future HomePod with AI support could be in the works. But according to a new report, that’s not the case. Instead, Apple’s first home device with Apple Intelligence support will represent a brand new product category: a table-top robot.

The iOS 18 betas have brought a number of worthwhile new features, but most of us are waiting impatiently for Apple Intelligence – in particular, the big Siri upgrade we’re expecting.

There’s been no sign of any significant AI features so far, and a report over the weekend suggests that even those on the developer beta won’t get to try the new Siri until next year …

An interesting piece suggests that Apple’s AI logo* – along with the new Siri icon – is intended to look friendly, unthreatening, and is deliberately non-anthropomorphic.

*Yeah, that could be Apple Artificial Intelligence, or Apple Apple Intelligence. Thanks, Tim.

Other companies appear to have set themselves the same goals with their AI offerings, hence all the simple, colorful graphics …

The iOS 18 beta 1 has brought some of the promised new changes, but it doesn’t include Siri improvements, ChatGPT access, or many of the Apple Intelligence features (though there are a few exceptions).

Apple hasn’t revealed a precise timeline for each of the new features, likely wanting to avoid making promises it can’t keep, but there are some indications of what we can expect when …

Apple is rumored to announce many new AI features for its devices next week at WWDC 2024, and some of the rumors say that the company will use generative AI to make Siri better. With this in mind, designer João Bortolotti created a concept imagining what it would be like if Siri could read and interact with what’s on the screen.

A new report suggests Apple may announce a number of iOS 18 Mail app AI features during WWDC.

These include the option to automatically create Smart Replies to emails, as well as the ability to draft a reply yourself and then ask Siri to change the tone – for example, ‘make this sound more professional’ …

Apple’s OpenAI partnership – which will be used to bring generative AI features to Siri – is likely just an interim one, while the company expands and deepens its own chatbot tech.

The prediction was made by Dag Kittlaus, who co-founded Siri before the tech was acquired by Apple …

We’re a little over a week away from the WWDC keynote, in which Apple is expected to announce a slew of new AI features as part of iOS 18.

This is expected to be the point at which Siri gets generative AI smarts, thanks to a deal with OpenAI to incorporate ChatGPT tech …

Siri is expected to be at the center of a host of AI-related enhancements coming to iOS 18. Now, thanks to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we have fresh information on some of the specific upgrades coming to Apple’s intelligent assistant.

A new report says that iOS 18 Siri features will include a better contextual understanding of things like people, companies, events, and locations.

A new ‘catch-up’ feature is also said to be included in the AI feature-set, where you can ask Siri to bring you up to speed on notifications you’ve received while away from your phone …

OpenAI recently launched their official ChatGPT app for the Mac (before Windows). The macOS app brings most of the functionality from the iPhone version to the desktop — no web browser needed.

When it comes to smart assistant availability, Apple has taken a vastly different approach with Siri than Amazon has with Alexa. Whereas the latter assistant can come baked into a variety of non-Amazon smart devices, Apple has largely restricted Siri to its own first-party products. One exception came in late 2021 when ecobee added support for Siri in its SmartThermostat. Now, three years later, a second product has received Siri integration.

We’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about iOS 18 having new AI-powered features, since Apple CEO Tim Cook himself has confirmed many times that the company has been working on generative AI features. Now a report claims that iPhone and iPad users will have the option of summarizing long text messages using AI.

Following on from the announcement of Apple’s second quarter fiscal 2024 results, Apple CEO Tim Cook joined the company’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri on a call with investors. During this call, Cook again teased Apple’s upcoming generative AI and said that the company has advantages over its competitors.

It’s clear that we’re going to see some exciting new Apple AI features this year, and the usual way for the company to announce major new iOS features would be to preview them at WWDC, and then launch them in September with the new iPhone line-up.

But there could be a couple of reasons to hope for some kind of preview of these new features on the new iPad Pro during the May 7 Let Loose Apple event …

For some reason which utterly eludes me, 2024 seems to be the year of AI hardware. We’ve had the Humane AI Pin, the Rabbit R1, and even former Apple design chief Jony Ive reportedly seeking a billion-dollar bet for his own attempt.

Reviews of Humane were brutal, with those who tried it as unimpressed by its performance as they were bemused as to its purpose – and the Rabbit R1 isn’t faring too much better, with Marques Brownlee describing it as “barely reviewable” …

Some reports last month revealed that Apple was in talks with Google to use Gemini to power new AI features coming to iOS 18. Earlier this year, 9to5Mac also reported that Apple had been running internal tests with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Now a Bloomberg report claims that Apple has resumed negotiations with OpenAI for a potential partnership.

Pretty much every tech company has been investing in generative AI for the past two years, and Apple is rumored to finally bring new AI-based tools to iPhone users soon with iOS 18. However, the costs of operating such tools are quite high, and Meta has just confirmed that it will take years for the company to make money from AI.

People have been complaining about Siri for years now, arguing that it’s fallen behind the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant. With clear evidence that 2024 is going to see dramatic improvements in Apple’s AI features, will iOS 18 Siri finally turn things around?

I’m very much hoping the answer is yes, and think there are three clues which provide some reason for optimism …

An Apple research paper describes how the company has been developing Ferret-UI, a generative AI system specifically designed to be able to make sense of app screens.

The paper is somewhat vague about the potential applications of this – likely deliberately so – but the most exciting possibility would be to power a much more advanced Siri …

Siri launched with the iPhone 4S in October 2011, replacing Voice Control with a more capable virtual assistant. A dozen years later, Siri has evolved into the primary way we interact with our Apple products.

Wait, no, I’m being told Siri sounds more natural but the core technology is roughly the same. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence now means generative AI and chat bots are based on large language models.

Siri and the rest of iOS 18 will join the AI revolution in June, ending our long national nightmare of Siri being somewhere between hot garbage and kinda useful sometimes. At least that’s what’s being reported, but we don’t really have a great sense of what to expect yet.