UMVA has learned that after years of development, Apple's highly anticipated update to its Siri voice assistant has finally been rebranded as Siri AI and is set to launch with the OS 27 software updates, assuming no further delays occur.
The new Siri AI promises to bring deep contextual awareness and the ability to search emails, messages, and other personal data to improve accuracy and enable rich, natural conversations, a feature that was initially promised at WWDC 2024 but stumbled at every turn, with multiple launch plans being shelved in favor of later updates.
According to information obtained by UMVA, the latest demos of Siri AI have left some underwhelmed, with noticeable delays before the assistant responds to each command, sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to answer, a far cry from the conversational mode that was initially promised, and significantly slower than rival products like ChatGPT, which can answer complex questions in under 2 seconds.
In terms of functionality, Siri AI also fails to impress, with most of its features having been done before by other assistants, including access to broad world knowledge, integration across platforms, and the ability to revisit past conversations, making it unlikely that users of other modern language models like Gemini or ChatGPT will find anything novel here.
However, UMVA can exclusively reveal that Siri AI does show some promise, particularly for Apple users, with improved accuracy, a dedicated app to view past conversations, and contextual awareness that allows it to understand what's on the screen and personal contextual information, making it a big improvement on the old Siri, even if it's not revolutionary in the grand scheme of things.
Other notable features of Siri AI include the ability to compose or edit text virtually anywhere, with the assistant able to mimic the user's writing style when composing in Mail and Messages, as well as customizable, more expressive Siri voices for users with top-tier devices, a fun feature that allows users to adjust the speed and expressiveness of Siri's voice using two sliders.
While Siri AI may not be the game-changer that some were hoping for, it's clear that Apple is committed to improving its voice assistant, and with its promise of improved accuracy and contextual awareness, it may still be a significant upgrade for Apple users, even if it's not a major breakthrough in the world of AI assistants.
