In the midst of a storm of artificial intelligence initiated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple is showing a long stagnation with Siri virtual assistant.
At the end of 2022, ChatGPT created a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) with things that were previously considered impossible by most. Tech giants are also quickly joining the race to integrate AI and AI applications of their own. But Apple shows that they are slow to catch up with the trend.
Launched in 2011, Apple’s virtual assistant Siri was acquired from a startup and integrated into the iPhone 4S as a default feature.
Siri has the ability to understand many commands, thereby helping users with different tasks. The capabilities of this virtual assistant, though limited, were quite impressive at the time. Users can easily call Siri to see the weather forecast, set alarms, support web browsing, call, and play music all just commands. Apple always thinks that this is all just the beginning. However, Siri never reached its peak.
Years have passed, but few features have been added to Siri. Despite adding a few new languages and changing the interface, there has never been an update that completely changed the way Siri works. However, users gradually became excited about virtual assistants, and technology companies quickly launched their own AI assistants.
Google has launched Assistant, Microsoft is Cortana, and Amazon has Alexa. But while these companies work to make their virtual assistants smarter over time, Siri still basically works the way it was introduced in 2011.
Nearly 12 years after Siri was announced, AI is now more advanced than ever. ChatGPT has shown users how a virtual assistant thinks, even creating standalone content instead of just giving short answers to commands.
Most recently, Microsoft announced that it would integrate GPT-4 into its versions of Office with the “Copilot” feature. With this new feature, users can completely do things like open PowerPoint and ask the application to create a complete presentation through the description.
Apple has always promised Siri will get smarter and better, but it hasn’t happened yet. According to many reports, the Siri team simply couldn’t improve it because of the way this virtual assistant was built from the ground up.
When Siri was released with the iPhone 4S, Apple was simply following the code obtained from the startup’s project. The original idea was to launch a product and then proceed to build newer versions in the future. But years later, “apple defect” only made minor changes through updates to Siri’s original code instead of creating a newer version.
As a result, Siri’s source code is now a mess, and many sources claim that no one at Apple really wants to change it anymore. According to 9to5Mac, most of this virtual assistant’s answers are predefined and not really AI-based.
The New York Times recently reported that Apple engineers are testing the so-called language generation concept for Siri, a report that has been corroborated in the latest beta of tvOS 16.4, the software that runs both Apple TV and Apple’s HomePod smart speaker. However, everything at this point is still experimental and it is unclear when users will see this new AI-based Siri in real life.
Apple is known as a pioneer in the field of virtual assistants. But this technology giant is gradually being left behind by rivals. Siri is now like a joke, many users complain that this virtual assistant can’t even understand a simple request.
Apple seems to have lost in the field of virtual assistants. While the company is trying to make Siri better or in some ways less bad, its competitors have launched virtual assistants with the ability to generate text, and images, even write your own software. Maybe it’s time for Apple to stop trying to improve Siri and start with a newer project because it’s too late for Siri.