MAC FORMAT INVESTIGATES
What’s next for Siri?
One year on from WWDC 2024 and all the promised features in the revamped Siri have yet to materialise. What’s going on?
WRITTEN BY DAVID CROOKES
It’s fair to say that the implementation of Apple Intelligence with Siri has not gone to plan.
Image credit: Apple
For our latest subscription offer see page 34!
A pple’s 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) promised the start of a new era for iOS, iPadOS and macOS. As well as introducing Apple Intelligence, the Cupertino giant said Siri was going to become more deeply integrated. Siri was set to be more personal and more aware of what was happening on screen. It would use on-device information, work across Apple and third-party apps and get tasks done with the utmost ease.
Today, those promises are still in the air, with all of us yet to see an Apple Intelligence-powered Siri capable of understanding personal context. It cannot analyse your emails, messages, photos, calendar events and files nor allow you to ask questions, such as “what was that book Tim suggested?”. You can’t ask it to pull data from apps and use it elsewhere, and you can’t look at an email with a restaurant recommendation and ask Siri how long it reckons it’ll take to get there.
Craig Federighi is said to have been alarmed at the state of Siri’s proposed artificial intelligence update.
Image credits: Apple Inc, OpenAI Inc
Siri isn’t capable of editing your images on your say-so either and it can’t jump from one app to another. So while it will understand your requests if you stumble over your words; allow you to type to Siri rather than speak and converse in a more natural voice, and make the edge of the screen glow as you issue commands, they’re not quite the groundbreaking features that we were promised more than a year ago. If it wasn’t for ChatGPT’s integration aimed at complex queries, Siri would be severely lacking.