Apple Will Revamp Siri To Catch Up To Its Chatbot Competitors (nytimes.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Apple's top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company's virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant. The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product's use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation. It often misunderstood questions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, knew that if someone asked for the weather in San Francisco and then said, "What about New York?" that user wanted another forecast.
The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant's most significant reorganization in more than a decade. Determined to catch up in the tech industry's A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project -- the company's special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives. Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Siri's underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time. The update to Siri is at the forefront of a broader effort to embrace generative A.I. across Apple's business. The company is also increasing the memory in this year's iPhones to support its new Siri capabilities. And it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI. Further reading: Apple Might Bring AI Transcription To Voice Memos and Notes
The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant's most significant reorganization in more than a decade. Determined to catch up in the tech industry's A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project -- the company's special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives. Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Siri's underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time. The update to Siri is at the forefront of a broader effort to embrace generative A.I. across Apple's business. The company is also increasing the memory in this year's iPhones to support its new Siri capabilities. And it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI. Further reading: Apple Might Bring AI Transcription To Voice Memos and Notes
Her. Just what we need. (Score:1)
At least we'll be comfortably warm in winter, what with all the terawatts of GPU heat melting the polar ice caps so that we can identify the living plant we
Been at the GPT Block Before (Score:2)
Had a product that only interacted via prompts (not smart speaker) and you had to guess, guess, re-guess dozens of times to get it to do anything.
It was trained on a limited set of modern words for things, most of the action words were product names or product feature names only a 14 year old would know.
It's just continuing on the bridge to nowhere Apple started with icon only apps with the iPhone.
Once you get to mid-30s or above, reading text takes over from remembering which icon to press. And don't get
Re: Been at the GPT Block Before (Score:2)
Voice command versus product features & interf (Score:2)
The designers falling back to voice command and voice prompts instead of producing a product with an interface, documented features, training videos, written manuals and human interface design.
It's the lazy thing of 'lets ship them a white board with a couple boxes on it, we can fill in the actual features later' design mentality.
You get a half-baked product which is likely to get discontinued or have updates discontinued before it has features which make it useful to you.
The product I'm referring to has vo
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To all these "AI simultaneously sucks and will also destroy the planet through overuse" - exactly who do you think will be buying all this power and all these GPUs to use said power, if there's no economic value to it and a competitor could provide as good or better of a service without said insane expense?
The electricity generation market was valued at $1,6 trillion per year in 2023 (just generation, not distribution, grid services, etc). If you're going to be meaningfully increasing that, you're going to
You Forgot The Word 'Try'. (Score:2)
Unless you have an actual magic 8 ball that works.
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I would. I don't like to share.
Right Place Right Time (Score:1)
Good luck Apple! (Score:1)
I just hope Siri doesn't start making up appointments or start going on about how Hitler was black.
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SIRI used to be a unfiltered context-relevant search. The iPhone came to prominence mainly because they had a usable web browser on a phone (and a larger touch-enabled screen to use it with). When that wasn't unique anymore they introduced SIRI to be unique again. It worked, if briefly.
V1 SIRI was *astoundingly* good voice recognition and contextual search for the time. Unfortunately it could also tell you where to find prostitutes and how to kill yourself...neither of which can be monetized today. Wor
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Well, TODAY maybe, but... [twimg.com]
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Unfortunately it could also tell you where to find prostitutes and how to kill yourself...neither of which can be monetized today.
*CANADA has entered the chat*
Joking aside that is a good summary of Siri to date, however where Siri has a lot of potential is the integration is has with individual app data stores. It's just that to date, that has not seemed to work very well to let Siri see into your data, or at least not in the small experiments I have tried... Im hoping that letting local models scare that
Need option to delete Siri from iOS devices (Score:2)
The federal government should really regulate that device and computer makers be required to provide usable interfaces so that
- blind people can use a screen reader
- deaf people can use it without hearing or issuing voice commands
- elderly people can use it without needing complex finger motor skills
- colorblind people and people with yellow light blindness can use it without having to guess what a nearly invisible icon of the wrong color does
- Voice commands are not a solution,
- icon only interfaces are no
Back to basics ... take out the promo filters (Score:3)
I remember when Siri launched it was essentially an unfiltered, location-relevant, all-access search-bot.
You could literally say 'hey siri i want to have sex' and it would pull up local brothels and "massage parlors" that did extras ... in NYC where it's very much illegal but equally commonplace. This was 2011/2012.
I'm NOT saying finding illegal sex work should be the standard to measure against, but the difference today is you're getting a paid/curated experience that's NOT what YOU want. It's what other people are paying/being-paid to show you. The problem we face is companies want to provide AI services because it gets them closer to "you" so they can sell even better advertising ... but they also won't 1) actually answer your questions if they aren't status-quo and 2) give you any semblance of privacy even if you're paying for the service.
There's oodles of sci-fi with personal AI-assistants. We're at a technology plateau where that is entirely possible and practical. But to make that actually practical and better than the basic search from 15 years ago, they would have to be both honest and private. Neither is available.
TL;DR - AI is the next-gen 3D TV with a carve-out for things like code generation. pass. moving on. get tf off my lawn and i'm not even sorry.
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Oh, they absolutely are available. Tons of uncensored models on Huggingface. But you have to run your own model or find a place that hosts said models.
Want current SIRI or my own (Score:2)
I don't think I got an iPhone until after Siri was defanged. But currently I really depend on it for limited things: turn off all alarms, set an alarm/reminder, turn on/off the flashlight, what time is it, is it raining (well that is usually wrong but what is the forecast usually works). Siri is really good at doing those things when the room is dark and I am bleary-eyed. If those stop working it would be inconvenient. Of course if an elderly had a bad fall and could call for help that would be amazing. But
Obligatory siri demonstration (Score:3)
[youtu.be]https://youtu.be/kTefnhbg0Ig?s... [youtu.be]
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Oops, caught with pants down (Score:2)
Not just Apple, everybody got caught off guard by ChatGPT.
Google and Amazon have been working on AI for a while now, but they are far behind ChatGPT and MS Copilot (which is the same technology). Even Google's Gemini, which is their new "super cool" AI, struggles with questions Copilot can easily answer. In particular, I notice this when it comes to questions about specific technologies, for example, stage lighting control consoles. Copilot can provide very precise information about products and technologie