Subj : Siri is being left behind and Apple knows it To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Fri Apr 28 2023 13:00:04 Siri is being left behind and Apple knows it Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:46:34 +0000 Description: A new report suggests Apple employees have grown frustrated by the stagnation of Siri. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a story explaining how Apple had lost the AI race to the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft and a new report from The Information digs deeper into the stagnation of Siri, the companys once-groundbreaking virtual assistant. Where the NYT sought to expose Siris technological shortcomings the software is supposedly built on a clunky database that takes weeks to be updated with basic features The Information s report takes aim at the ongoing personnel issues facing Siris development. According to more than three dozen former Apple employees who worked in its AI and machine learning groups, Apples attempts to improve Siri have been hampered by organizational dysfunction and a lack of ambition, with the software now widely derided by many still working at the company. Per The Information, developers working on the Apple VR headset reportedly became so frustrated with Siri that they considered building alternative methods for controlling the headset with voice technology. Yikes. Apple launched Siri with the iPhone 4S inOctober 2011 (Image credit: Shutterstock / Tada Images) So, why is there so much chaos surrounding Siri? By the sounds of things, the answer is two-fold. On the one hand, Apple has struggled to keep hold of employees crucial to the programs development or more specifically, its lost those individuals to Google. The Information reports that the likes of Srinivasan Venkatachary, Steven Baker and Anand Shukla were lured away from Apple to Google; owing to the latters supposedly greater understanding of or, at least, willingness to embrace large language models (LLMs). Apple CEO Tim Cook allegedly tried to persuade [these individuals] to stay at the company, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai is said to have personally wooed them away. The other problem which plays into the above is Apples supposed reluctance to take risks with AI and Siri. The Information reports that top executives at Apple are worried about seeing the companys software make headline-worthy gaffes of the sort weve seen from ChatGPT and Bard in recent months since Apple is known for having a watertight public image. Whats next for Siri? (Image credit: Unsplash [Omid Armin]) As for where these revelations leave Siri, its clear that Apple isnt expecting to revolutionize its virtual assistant any time soon. Instead, while the likes of Google and Microsoft pile billions into chatbot development, Apple seems set to remain focused on delivering actual, physical products that trump the competition a strategy which has proven staggeringly lucrative over the years. Thats not to say Siri is being left to completely fall by the wayside. iOS 17 is expected to bring a handful of improvements to Apples virtual assistant, with the upcoming update rumored to shift Siri's on-screen interface away from the bottom of your iPhone's screen and up into the Dynamic Island , on compatible devices. Additionally, Bloombergs Mark Gurman reports that users may soon only need to say Siri instead of Hey Siri when activating the personal assistant. This would bring Apples assistant in line with Amazons Alexa, which has only required users to say Alexa since its launch in 2014. Tellingly, however, Gurman also notes that getting Siri to function correctly without the Hey has been a technical challenge requiring a significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work. Clearly, then, Apples failure to invest in AI development is already coming back to bite it. But until the likes of ChatGPT and Bard become irreplaceable mainstream tools, theres little reason to think that Siri as bad as it is right now will impact Apple's continued dominance in the technology space. Alternatively, of course, you can just choose to bolster your Siri with ChatGPT for the best of both worlds. ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/siri-is-being-left-behind-and-apple-knows-it --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .