Apple plans to offer AI alternatives as it works to overhaul Siri

Macworld

Mark Gurman and Dave Bennett have an interesting feature at Bloomberg about Apple’s AI struggles. It is primarily a summary of the last several months’ reporting on how Apple fell behind in AI, why it failed to deliver on its iOS 18 promises, and how it’s shaking up the organization to get back on track.

But there are a few new or updated bits of information in there, even for those who have been paying attention to this drama. The report paints the picture of a company that is dramatically overhauling Siri, which will take time. In the meantime, the company plans to offer users a variety of options in AI tools.

We previously reported, Apple is working on a huge Siri overhaul. The current version of Siri is a “hybrid” model of sorts, with different models to handle simple iPhone commands and more sophisticated AI queries. Apple now has AI-centered offices in Zurich that are working on a new “all LLM” (large language model) version of Siri that will handle everything with one sophisticated engine. This Siri is said to be conversational and much better at understanding information and taking actions.

The company has in the past been reluctant to even pursue Siri as an alternative to today’s chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, but that thinking has changed and it is racing ahead. Work appears to be going well, with Gurman and Bennett reporting that, “the chatbot the company has been testing internally has made significant strides over the past six months, to the point that some executives see it as on par with recent versions of ChatGPT.”

It’s still a long way from release, however. It won’t be ready to show off at WWDC next month, and won’t be a part of iOS 19. In fact, the report says, Siri is going to take a back seat at WWDC, in favor of other AI enhancements like battery management and a health coach. That will be disappointing for Apple fans who have taken to making Siri failures a meme, and are at least looking for Apple to patch up the current version into something less embarrassing.

While we wait for “LLM Siri,” Apple plans to offer alternatives. In most of the world, requests that Siri can’t handle can be sent to ChatGPT for an answer, and it is used in the Visual Intelligence feature as well. Bloomberg once again states that Apple will add Google’s Gemini as an option in addition to ChatGPT in iOS 19, and what’s more, the company is in “early talks” with Perplexity to add it as another ChatGPT alternative for Siri, and as a search provider in Safari.

Apple seems to know how bad Siri’s reputation has gotten, at least. According to the report, the company is going to work to separate Siri from the overall Apple Intelligence brand in its marketing, because the Siri brand isn’t helping. Apple will also close the gap between when it announces new features and when they are available, to avoid the embarrassing slip-up of this past year, where it promised Siri features last June that still haven’t materialized.

Apple will kick off WWDC with a keynote on June 9 to showcase the Apple Intelligence features coming in the next year.