The Remaking of Siri

Apple has finally managed to make Siri intelligent but not without outside help. At the WWDC on Monday, their annual conference for developers, the highlight was the announcement of Apple Intelligence yet again. Unlike promises never meeting reality in the past giving Apple the tag of the laggard in the AI race, this time might be different because it outsourced. They call it the Apple Foundation Models developed in partnership with Google and its Gemini model, which has already proven itself to be among the top AI platforms in the world.

The advantage that Apple brings to its users once they get the AI correct is integration with their hardware ecosystem. Bundle a good AI assistant that Siri so far could never be and the utility for any iPhone or MacBook user would suddenly shoot up. Siri, for instance, according to the demo shown yesterday, has screen awareness. So, while scrolling down a World Cup fixture, you can stop at a game and ask Siri to recommend the famous foods of the two playing countries. It can then send an invite to friends on a group chat for a party to watch the game on that date along with the menu that will be served with the cuisines of the two teams. Siri can also pull up recipes for these foods. While Siri has access to your entire data to fulfil personal requests, it also has 'broad world knowledge' from online.

A USP of Apple's AI is that it is perhaps the only one with extraordinary emphasis on privacy. Data is processed locally or in a private cloud. No one, including Apple, has access to it.

Siri was a revolutionary feature when it came out. A personal assistant that would talk to you. But it was very limited in what it could provide and that was fine until the advent of AI assistants. Apple users were left wondering why they were stuck with something from an outdated era. Apple tried to develop its own AI and later had a limited tie-up with OpenAI, but Siri continued to increasingly be an anachronism. That will change now. It has Gemini's abilities but tailored for Apple users in a way that makes it more personal. Siri AI will be available as a beta version from July but the official stable update will be later this year, probably along with the iPhone 18 launch in September.