“Hey, Siri. Do better”
Apple is expected to unveil its new and improved Siri chatbot at its annual developer conference next week, and the tech giant — which has lagged in the artificial intelligence race — is looking to take the lead.
Apple long ago promised a smarter Siri, but in the 16 years since it acquired the app, it hasn’t delivered on its big promise. In fact, the company just settled a $250 million class-action lawsuit that claims the company misled iPhone users by touting artificial intelligence features through Siri that it couldn’t deliver.
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Two years ago, Apple promised a personalized version of Siri, which plaintiffs in that case say were “AI capabilities that did not exist at the time, do not exist now, and will not exist for two or more years” to bolster iPhone sales. The Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division concluded that Apple falsely claimed at the time that a new AI-powered Siri was “available now.”
Now, Apple says it’s finally able to do far more than the basic functions it has been limited to in the past.
Gemini’s fraternal twin
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Siri’s foundational technology was developed as part of the U.S. Department of Defense’s “Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes,” or CALO Project in 2003.
While Apple may be able to boast a new Siri, it can’t claim all the credit. The improved version of the app was built using Google’s far superior Gemini AI model and is expected to look more like ChatGPT.
When it comes to everyday tasks, Gemini has dwarfed other AI models, often ranked as the “Best Overall” chatbot among tech circles. Apple is paying Google’s parent company, Alphabet, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion a year to access Gemini, according to Investor’s Business Daily.
Apple will also piggyback on Google’s cloud and its stock of Nvidia Blackwell B200 data chips. It’ll need the extra memory to power a more sophisticated version of Siri “on device.”
‘Fundamentally different’
While it won’t be clear if the new Siri continues to be inferior to its other AI counterparts, it’s almost certain to be superior in one way: privacy.
Apple has long been a paragon of protecting its users’ data, with end-to-end encryption — meaning only the user can access their information. Apple products also store information like biometric data only on the device, reducing the risk of a cloud-based breach. Nvidia’s chips will also help with that, since they have the capability to encrypt data as it’s being processed.
However, Apple’s emphasis on privacy could also be its Achilles heel. The company keeps its users’ data incredibly secure — even from itself — which can make it more difficult to train better AI models.
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