Siri is in trouble as Apple's AI ambitions are full of "dysfunction"
posted Monday May 1, 2023 by Scott Ertz
Over the past few months, the topic of artificial intelligence, and particularly generative AI, have become a significant topic. We've even talked about the past few episodes of Piltch Pointt because of how important it has become. We've seen companies like Microsoft and Google begin integrating the technology into their search tools and in Microsoft's case all of their tools. But, for Apple, there has been essentially zero discussion about the technology, despite the company's existing position with Siri, and it might be because the company has no direction for Siri at all.
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is an artificial intelligence technology that can create data autonomously. This includes things like creating text, music, and images without human input or supervision. It's a powerful tool for AI researchers as well as businesses and other organizations who want to leverage AI to produce content faster and more efficiently. Generative AI is also being used in areas such as robotics, natural language processing, and more.
Generative AI has been used commonly in chatbots. These bots can generate realistic-seeming conversations that can respond to user input. This technology has been adopted by companies such as Microsoft and Google, who use it to power their novel search experiences. Essentially, you can type to (or theoretically speak to) these bots and receive complex answers to questions. It's become popular, but not in the places we might expect.
Apple's missing AI for Siri
The most logical place to incorporate an Ai-powered chatbot would be the existing chatbots that we have in our homes or in our pockets. While Google has a natural integration between Google Assistant and Google Bard, Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri seem to be completely missing. Amazon has its own generative AI technology, so the Alexa team could definitely be working on it, but Apple has no news about AI in their technology.
In the context of Apple, generative AI could be a powerful tool for them to use in order to refine the capabilities of Siri or create new applications that leverage the power of AI. Since Apple first purchased the Siri technology, they have struggled to modernize it so that it can be made more useful. However, there seems to be chaos within the organization.
A new report from The Information, the long-term belief seems to be true. There is something going on inside Apple's AI division that is preventing them from getting anything done. Internally, the company has no faith in the Siri team. As evidence, the team developing the mixed reality headset, which has been delayed several times, considered developing their own technology for voice control so they could avoid Siri entirely.
Falling behind quickly
If Microsoft hasn't given up on Cortana so early, they would have already rewritten the backend of the technology to be powered by JARVIS or OpenAI, like the rest of its technology. Google is already working to enhance Google Assistant with Bard results. If Alexa survives the year, it will certainly be powered by some generative AI system by the end of the year. But, because of the chaos within Apple, it looks like Siri will fall even farther behind the competition than it already is, and it is already far behind the rest of the industry.
