Has Apple’s AI ‘glow up’ made Siri better?

Siri is getting a generative AI revamp, a move that will make Apple’s digital assistant powerful and useful again after years of relative irrelevancy, according to one of its original founders.

Babak Hodjat invented the natural language processing technology that eventually became Siri. He said in an interview that Siri was well ahead of its time when it launched, but then fell behind its time. Until now.

When Apple unleashed Siri in 2011 it was the first language assistant on the market, but received mixed reviews for lacking certain information, sub-par voice recognition and for requiring stiff user commands. It was overtaken quickly by its smarter rivals like Amazon’s Alexa, which was compatible with more devices and was more natural to interact with.

Apple this month unveiled its iPhone 16 range that will feature a revamped, supercharged Siri, as part of its ‘Apple Intelligence’ suite of AI features that will come preloaded on the new devices. It’s the biggest change to Siri in its 13-year history.

Apple’s new systesm will offer writing suggestions and create a more capable Siri.

The new Siri will understand if you stumble over your words, can help you draft emails and essays, and will be much smarter overall thanks to a deep integration with ChatGPT.

A user can ask, “When is Mum’s flight landing?” and Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time.

For Hodjat, Siri’s generative AI glow-up will help Apple catch up to its rivals. He said it’s the update that Apple needed.

“Launching Siri as the first language assistant was the exception for Apple,” Hodjat told this masthead in an interview.

“They saw the value in improving the human experience and moved quickly. However, throughout most of its history, Apple has excelled by stepping back and perfecting the user experience of technology.”

Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, John Giannandrea, senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, and Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering.Credit: Bloomberg

There’s a lot at stake for Apple, which is the world’s largest company, worth about $US3.4 trillion ($5 trillion). The New York Times reported that Apple executives are privately worried that new AI technologies could upend the company’s dominance of the global smartphone market and displace the iPhone’s iOS software as the primary operating system.

After spending weeks trying ChatGPT in 2023, Apple executives including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea reorganised and accelerated the company’s AI projects and are now hopeful they can drag Siri into the modern era.

Hodjat began experimenting with AI in the late 1980s during his PhD and started a company that was the precursor to Siri, which then got acquired by Apple.

He’s now the chief technology officer of AI for consultancy giant Cognizant, and runs the company’s AI labs in San Francisco.

Babak Hodjat was one of Siri’s inventors.Credit: Bloomberg

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think it would happen during my lifetime,” he said of the current crop of powerful generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

“The impact of generative AI for most users will be its ability to function as an agent that communicates in natural language and solves problems for you.

The future will be about companies having agents in their devices and applications that can address your needs and interact with other agents on your behalf. They will operate like artificial knowledge workers in a box.”

“We have much more powerful tools in our toolbox right now. That’s how we should think about it – not that there’s some tool that’s replacing us.”

For telecommunications analyst Foad Fadaghi, managing director at Telsyte, Apple’s new AI features will likely take some time to catch on, both in terms of global rollout and the handsets that will be capable of running them.

Global smartphone shipments fell to their lowest number in a decade to 2023, and manufacturers including Apple will be hoping AI will drive a ‘super cycle’ event in which consumers en masse decide to upgrade their handsets. But Fadaghi is doubtful Apple’s announcements go far enough to start the super cycle.

“There needs to be much wider promotion and education [from Apple] on the usefulness of Apple Intelligence to drive a super cycle,” he said. “Just announcing it won’t be enough to drive sales.”

“As the smartphone market has matured, consumers are finding it less exciting to hear about new models. The challenge is the changes are relatively minor compared to years gone by,” Fadagi said.

“But the smartphone is far from losing its crown as consumers’ main digital device.”

As for what’s on the horizon, Hodjat pointed out that AI’s rampant energy usage is of key concern for research. He said the most significant areas of generative AI research currently are focused on power consumption and efficiency.

“Our devices and hardware were not designed to run the neural network models of today, which consume a lot of energy, and are rather slow and expensive to operate,” he said.

“Most of the research is exploring how we can do this better, like our organic brains, which are relatively small and energy efficient.”

“Our CEO always uses this example: farmers in rural India who are illiterate can use AI. They can program AI, talk to it in their dialect, and ask for help with decisions related to their farm.

The barrier to entry is very low now, so there are no excuses. If that farmer can use it, so can you. It’s much simpler than it’s ever been.”

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