Siri

One of the odder aspects of Apple’s history is that the company has gone in 14 years from one of the leaders in intelligent assistants to one of the biggest laggards.

We’ve gone from the futuristic-feeling Siri way back in 2011 to a painfully inadequate-feeling Apple Intelligence in 2025 ….

According to the latest edition of the Power On newsletter, Apple is facing multiple major hiccups in its AI rollout. While that isn’t a surprise, it does mean that many of its roadmapped features are being delayed, and technical challenges are resulting in certain features, including the ‘more conversational’ Siri update – shipping later.

A new conversational Alexa is expected to be revealed at an Amazon media event on February 26, with press invitations sent out yesterday.

A report citing Amazon insiders says that the all-new Alexa will be powered by generative AI, dramatically boosting its capabilities and putting even more pressure on Apple to launch a smarter Siri …

Apple Intelligence officially launched three months ago in iOS 18.1, and new features have steadily rolled out ever since. But the next iPhone update, iOS 18.4, is going to be especially big for new Apple Intelligence capabilities. Here are seven features and changes expected to arrive soon.

Apple commentator John Gruber yesterday described Siri’s current performance as “an unfunny joke,” giving its inability to correctly name the winner of Super Bowl 13 an example, noting that this is a basic query that any US chatbot ought to be able to answer.

It turns out that wasn’t an entirely random example: it was prompted by his friend Paul Kafasis, who decided to test Siri on Super Bowl 1 to 60 inclusive – and the results were not good …

Apple’s biggest upcoming AI features will arrive in iOS 18.4, with a heavy focus on Siri upgrades. But it’s the Vision Pro that I’m most excited to use those capabilities on. Here’s why.

Last week, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged “unlawful and intentional recording” of Siri interactions.

Apple’s settlement has led to a wave of conspiracy theories claiming that Siri is listening to you for targeted advertising, but the company says those claims are completely unfounded.

We may still be mostly waiting for a smarter Siri, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the company already knows how to create the holy grail of AI: artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI is the term given to an AI system which can match or exceed human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of fields – in other words, AI which is at least as smart as we are …

Update January 6, 2025: In a new statement to 9to5Mac, Apple says:

Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.

Find more details in our new story on the subject.

Over five years ago, Apple was hit with a lawsuit over ‘unlawful and intentional recording’ of Siri interactions. Now finally, the case is coming to an end, with Apple agreeing to pay $95 million in a settlement.

iOS 18.2 came packed with a lot of big and small changes. One smaller update that’s flown under the radar is a faster way to message Siri or ChatGPT. Here’s how it works.

In a heavily paywalled article, The Information reports that Apple is partnering with Broadcom to develop a new AI chip specifically designed for server use. Apple currently runs Apple Intelligence through its M-series chips on its servers through a system known as Private Cloud Compute. The distinction, according to the report, is that the new chip expected as soon as 2026, will be Apple’s first server chip specifically designed for AI tasks.

Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud appears to have no end in sight, and now Apple is unwittingly getting pulled into the complicated affair thanks to a possible Siri malfunction and Apple Music.

Apple says we’re living in ‘a new era’ for Siri thanks to Apple Intelligence. Is that true? Sort of. But the answer is a whole lot messier than you might expect, and getting even more so with the latest Mark Gurman report.

Apple has given a lot of attention to Siri in iOS 18 and macOS 15, as the virtual assistant now integrates with ChatGPT and will soon work with Apple Intelligence. One of the changes made is that it’s now easier to interact with Siri just by typing – and I believe this feature should be combined with Spotlight.

Bloomberg yesterday reported that Apple is currently testing an “LLM Siri” within the company, with the intention of announcing it as an iOS 19 feature.

That will likely see it previewed in June at WWDC 2025, but the report says that it won’t actually go live before the spring of 2026 …

There’s a pretty cool update for Messenger out today. Meta has introduced phone and video calling voicemail, similar to FaceTime. The Facebook calling service is also adding AI video backgrounds and integrating Siri.

Apple introduced the “Hey Siri” command with iOS 8 to let users easily interact with the virtual assistant without having to press any buttons. However, over the years, this has resulted in Siri being mistakenly triggered when the command is spoken on a TV ad. But Apple is finally working on a fix for this.

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 model, you can access Apple Intelligence when updating to iOS 18.1. This includes a new look for Siri, with a beautiful edge-lit animation.

However, the new animation does not mean that Siri’s intelligence or capabilities have meaningfully improved. Here’s exactly what’s new .. and what you have to keep waiting for.

It’s almost time for the start of a new era for Siri. Those aren’t my words, they’re Apple’s. But what does that mean? How is Siri getting better? It will start with iOS 18.1 in October, then continue with December’s iOS 18.2 release and beyond. Here’s everything coming to the new Siri with Apple Intelligence.

Apple will release iOS 18.0 next week to the public, but the company has also been running tests with iOS 18.1 beta – which will be released in October with the first set of Apple Intelligence tools. However, it seems that Siri has suddenly stopped working on iPhones and iPads running the latest beta of iOS 18.1.

Later this fall, Apple will ship a brand new, Apple Intelligence-infused Siri in iOS 18.1. The revamped digital assistant will gain a variety of new features that hopefully make it smarter than ever. But according to a new report, there’s another AI ‘personality’ in the works at Apple. This other personality, entirely separate from Siri, is being built for future Apple robotics devices.