I really feel like there's a fascinating valley of death between simple things that actually work and things of real value that are actually still beyond the horizon. They either aren't reliable enough, aren't accessible to the tech, or exceed the sophistication of our existing trust models. For example, I'm planning a trip. Booking a multiday holiday - there's a real beast that is time consuming, complex and painful. I test out the AI tools. They fail. Hard. Hallucinations all over the place, false confidence, inability to act, inability of me to trust their actions.
It's just nowhere near practical utility yet. Not "nearly there" but "not nearly half way there". I got the top tier of Gemini AI. Can it rent me a car? "As an AI I can absolutely guide you through the process of renting the car, but I can't physically access the web site or type in the details for you".
This whole venue of technology is an exercise in ivory tower construction completely disconnected from ordinary people.
They don't even seem to get the basics right, why would I want another layer on top?
The laundry list of object removal, spacial photos, better speech to text etc is always just the latest open models just being slapped in there and branded as Apple.
Ultimately the meat of this presentation was the work of people outside Apple.
Where I do want AI is for really complex queries, like "find me a time and money efficient itinerary through Europe visiting places I haven't been before. Present options and I'll tell you what I don't like about each of them then we'll narrow in on an optimal solution"
What do you mean exactly? Audio conversation only? If so I don't see it very practical for most of the things
Now [relevant parts of] Siri AI is restricted to iPhone 17 / iPhone Air and more recent models.
People who believed Apple and bought an iPhone 16 to use with Apple Intelligence are getting the shaft.
Is it available in China at least or is this another “50% of the userbase gets nothing new in the OS update” year?
Edit: https://x.com/wongmjane/status/2064052590992916840?s=46
Lol
Screenshotted in case they change it https://imgur.com/a/n1I3z8g
Siri seems to rarely get better and sometimes actually get worse.
"Try describing something different for the shortcut."
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it still doesn't work.
>The Passwords app alerts you to weak or compromised passwords and can update them on your behalf without the hassle.
Finally, I hope this works well. Personally one of the worst things to deal with.
If I want to use AI, I want to be able to select the exact messages / photos which I want to send to it. Otherwise I expect the device to keep the data protected. I don't need any of these features either; I can remember if someone sent me a cookie recipe.
Apple cannot compete in AI and has to adopt Gemini
Google is a really amazing company.
> Aga: have you heard of Calanthea? It’s a plant.
Really groundbreaking use of AI!
I'm curious how the pricing will work. Would it be free up to some limit and then some subscription pricing? I can't imagine it can be free unlimited usage given the price of serving these models.
EDIT: To provide meaningful chat functionality they have to either eat up the cost or charge a subscription for it. This will be first time they charge for Siri - a product that doesn’t garner any positive reviews. This gets even more interesting to watch
Using Siri essentially required me to use my hands anyway, so what's the point of voice?
I'd very seriously consider moving away from iPhone to a device that treats voice AI as a first class citizen (presently I mapped the 'double back tap' to open grok voice chat, and triple back tap to end it, which is a wonderful improvement over not having these, as you can do that pretty easily, even while driving etc).
Hmph.
That said, I'm THRILLED they claimed to "fix" the border radius snafu of Tahoe. Go ahead and push that now with the next Security fix. We won't mind at all.
In "English" later this year...
We've heard that before, haven't we, Apple? I feel the right way to fix the trust issues would be to announce this when it's actually done. Like, here's Siri AI, and you can download and use it, right now.
This feels like it could be solved with a list of permissions that the user has to turn on when using 3rd party AI.
Apple already:
1) requires developers to submit ID to publish an app on the appstore (at least I had to after ~1000 downloads to be able to publish an update)
2) has strong kernel enforced memory integrity and disallowes arbitrary code execution (unless explicitely approved for games like roblox, jitting not allowed tho has to be interpreted).
3) reviews every app update.
I feel like this is nothing more than Apple being angry that they have to allow people to actually choose what AI they want on their phone. This is particulary interesting if anthropic and openai decided they want to add siri ai override to their apps allowing them to take advantage of the apple ecosystem without signing some kind of deal like they had to with Google. I assume behind closed doors Google had to make some sacrifices for them to be the model powering siri.I'm extrapolating (there is less detail in that press release than I expected from your comment), but this sounds to be like it would be the thing that enables such a "list of permissions". I would be curious to know exactly what this agent entailed and why the EU did not approve it.
i was waiting for siri update and bummed it is not supported on 15.
when i use my native language (i mostly do it when in carplay) to search songs etc.. it gets it wrong a lot of times.
+ a more integrated into things like imessages, whatsapp etc..
- Siri please suggest an organization for this folder - Siri over my last work in this app can summarize what i am struggle ?
Pro active:
- Hey, the last hour you exchange 30 mails from the same subject, i look with your team ai and all have same struggle, based your key points in communication is X,Y,Z, this an mail for final align
- Your and your partner don't have quality time in last day, i see has the seat available in your favorites restaurant for next hour do you want made an appointment ?
Can't wait for unexpected password updates and naughty mails accidentally sent to my boss...
It’s really disappointing to see the on-device models being limited to so few devices. And this was after the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro were marketed so heavily with supporting their now failed effort at AI.
I believe we also heard that a couple years ago.
87% US teenagers own an iPhone. ~35% teens own an Apple Watch.
I think it just feels uncreative? Siri as a brand has some value, but if you want it to feel like a watershed moment where old Siri is "behind us" finally, just give it a new name.
But that's a big If!
I think a lot of it is the old "perfect is the enemy of good" with Apple trying multiple times now to announce this big basket of all these AI features supposedly coming all at once instead of just regularly shipping new useful AI integrations every month. There was so much easy useful shit that was immediately apparent as soon at OpenAI dropped that first big voice mode years ago coupled with basic app integrations. Particularly in the context of the AI labs that are operating in that lane almost too much where it seems a new model or mode comes out every two weeks.
(It’s been driving me crazy there’s no “AI this” button to discuss whatever is on my screen.)
> Your data is never stored
> Used only for your requests
> Verifiable privacy promise
Apple is cooking. Although at that point might as well bring the cloud features to more devices. Yeah it costs more but also locks users in harder.
People outside HN will begin to expect they can do anything with a computer in the same way they expect to be able to say anything in a support chat. Using pre-LLM automated chat feels like a joke. You enter the chat expecting to having a conversation and instead you get a GUI phone tree.
This is exactly how it feels to use any of the AI tous from Big Tech and others.
We have entered the era of deeply personal computing. There are so many incredibly personal features that no mega corp could ever be expected to build. Now that lay people can build things, let them!
There's a podcast that I listen to which is translated to a bunch of different languages. It's exclusively on Spotify with no RSS feed. I have a cron that checks daily passes it to an LLM and notifies me as necessary. I did not code a line. I only set up an OAuth endpoint.
Enabling your customers to do things like this will make them incredibly sticky too! So please for the love of God, let me glue Siri into whatever I want.
The interface for creating them manually has been so bad for so long, it feels clear to me that LLM-driven shortcut orchestration was always the endgame. Apple built up their ecosystem of composable "tools", and then trained an LLM on how to call them.
The result, IMO, is the first OpenClaw/Hermes competitor that's feasible for use by the general public.
Everyone with a paid Claude or ChatGPT that they're struggling to use to the fullest is going to have very little reason not to swap over to an upgraded iCloud+ plan (if they don't already have one). I suspect we're going to see mass cancellation of $20/mo plans very soon.
OpenAI's timing for removing their temporary increased usage limits is looking pretty unfortunate...
- Take a selfie
- Create a reminder
- Call Vicki
- Rotate photo left
- Create a new event (do you create an old event?)
- Send an email
- Resume my podcast
- Create a note
- Add photo to album
...can't iOS do literally every one of those things already? What the fuck is happening?
I can't wait to take a photo of a cricket ball and ask it what it is, ffs.
These people need to get out, touch grass, watch trees swaying in the breeze, and put their phones down before they lose toonmany neurons.
I really enjoy this lag. Apple with the whole DMA made iPhone completely dull to my eyes. Previously? Updated yearly. Now? 3+ years without replacement and probably will stick to it for next 2-3 years.
Sure maybe in US Apple is fun. But in EU it's.. boring (and not like a Golang boring, just boring)
I still don't think Siri can do that ::angry::
Our family uses Siri with a HomePod a lot, and it's already much better than it was a couple of years ago where it could basically set timers, tell you the weather. Now it answers questions ("when did the Knicks last win an NBA championship") with decent answers, instead of "I'll send the web results to your phone". But it's still far behind voice-chatting with Claude in the Claude app, so very much looking forward to this upgrade.
I will say though that proper voice transcription in Claude -- or any of these agents -- sucks. If it can't understand the question properly, then it can't provide the right answer. It works okay for me, but not for my kids, not when speaking quickly or in incomplete sentences (as people tend to do), etc.
At this point, “Siri” has a pretty strong cultural association with being underwhelming or unhelpful. Even if the new version is dramatically better, convincing people to give Siri another shot may be harder than launching the same technology under a new name.
Feels like a missed opportunity to reset expectations.
That’s what I expected from Siri but you can get in from ChatGPT .
Wait... don't tell me... there is an App for that.
Genius way to sell more phones
Really they are just selling on device Ai
> Siri AI coming in English later this year.
Strange way to phrase it, but okay.
> Siri AI will be available In beta later this year and requires an Apple Intelligence–enabled device set to a supported language. Available in English to start. Siri AI will not initially be available in the EU on iOS and iPadOS.
Ah okay, not EU enabled. The only reason for this, in my tinfoil hat, must be for data farming.