iOS 18 Could Bring Siri to the Next Level with Major Improvements

There’s still a long time left before the announcement of iOS 18. The event for iOS 17 was in June 2023 (WWDC), and all eligible devices are now entering their final beta phases. iOS 18 will be announced at WWDC 2024, usually sometime in June. All devices eligible for iOS 17 will begin receiving the update in the second week of September, around the time the Apple Event for the iPhone 15 series concludes.

While there were many improvements to the user experience on iOS 17, Apple is still way behind the competition regarding Virtual Assistants. Google’s Assistant is more natural at responses and is much better at contextual answers. While Bixby was mediocre at launch, it currently surpasses Siri in 2023. This isn’t a good look for Apple.

Considering the massive AI boom in 2023, Google Assistant will only improve over time. Google’s Bard is a major step in natural language processing. Many companies are integrating Chat GPT into their software, too. Apple’s AI game was never solid, and their Virtual Assistant is the weakest.

This is because of Apple’s apparent focus on privacy. For an assistant to understand and help you better, it needs as much data about you as possible. This contradicts Apple’s privacy-centric approach, so many are willing to forgive Siri’s limitations. However, there are much better ways of doing this.

For example, on Google Assistant, all the data about you remains on your device, offline, and is encrypted. Google won’t get this data from your device and remains completely safe.

According to The Information, Apple is boosting its spending on AI development. Since Apple has a world-class budget for R&D, they could easily create a great natural language model. The report claims that Apple spends millions daily on developing AI models.

Apple’s AI team got authorization to develop conversational AI four years ago. Expanding the spending on this right now makes sense after the boom of Chat GPT and Bard. iPhone users may soon be able to use simple voice commands with Siri to automate everyday smartphone tasks that typically involve multiple steps. For example, you can use Siri to create a GIF using the last five photos you took, and you can then text it to a friend. Currently, this process takes a lot longer.

You can do the same with the Shortcuts app, but it takes much longer. Automation and Routines with the Shortcuts app are a significant part of iOS. You can use it to create custom icon packs, remove backgrounds, create your automation with Siri, make chore lists, and more.

Since it can already do so much, adding AI will only improve things. Google is allegedly working on more complex AI integration with Google Assistant, which it aims to release next year. Apple could beat Google to the punch with their new algorithms. However, it is interesting to see how they handle this while balancing their privacy-centric approach. It will probably be the same solution as Google: process user information on-device and encrypt it within the Secure Enclave. They already do this for several other things like iCloud.

The only improvement iOS 17 has to Siri is the removal of the “Hey” wake word, so you can now say “Siri” instead of “Hey, Siri.” This isn’t much, and we hope iOS 18 brings much more.