Apple refreshed Siri after many years of being behind in the AI race
Siri has been redesigned towards a chatbot
After a long time of being considered slow in the artificial intelligence (AI) race, the new Siri is built on the Apple Intelligence platform, and takes advantage of Google's Gemini technology to expand AI capabilities, towards the ability to handle in-depth tasks and personalize the user experience.
One of the most notable changes is that Siri has been redesigned with a chatbot-like interactive interface. Users can continuously chat in context, save and access conversation history similar to today's popular AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Gemini.
Users can also send text requests or upload files for Siri to analyze and assist with content processing.
In addition, Siri is more deeply integrated with the Camera application, adding search and image analysis capabilities similar to Google Lens.
Notably, the new generation Siri can exploit personal data stored on the device, and understand the content being displayed on the screen to give appropriate responses in real time.
For example, when a user requests to compose an email or group message, Siri can automatically synthesize relevant information from the Notes application or files stored on the device to create a complete draft.
This is a trend that many technology companies are pursuing to help AI assistants understand the user's personal context better.
During the demonstration at the event, Siri showed the ability to coordinate multiple consecutive tasks automatically.
When receiving a request related to an entertainment event, Siri can look up the schedule, provide booking instructions, and create a reminder schedule before ticket sales open.
For image processing tasks, Siri can recognize landmarks from photos, open directions on the Maps application, and search for related images in the personal library to add to shared albums at the user's request.
Strategy to leverage strengths from AI partners
Before being upgraded, Siri was almost "stagnant" in the context of the explosive AI revolution, while competitors such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude continuously added new features.
At WWDC 2024, Apple introduced many personalized AI features for Siri to promote demand for device upgrades. However, some features were later delayed in implementation, causing the company to face a lot of criticism from the technology world and users.
However, many experts believe that Apple still has a chance to catch up in the AI race.
History shows that Apple is not always a pioneer, but is often successful in perfecting and commercializing technologies that have already appeared on the market, similar to how it did with smartphones and smart watches.
However, allowing AI deeper access to personal data also raises new privacy concerns.
Some cybersecurity experts say the security boundary could become more fragile as AI assistants gain the ability to analyze content displayed on screens and access multiple sources of personal data.
To address these concerns, Apple said the Gemini integration will come with privacy protection mechanisms similar to the solutions it has applied with ChatGPT. The company emphasizes that the majority of core tasks will be processed directly on the device instead of sending data to cloud servers.
Siri's upgrade comes in the context of users increasingly having mixed views on AI. While one part is excited about automation tools and smart assistants, the other part is concerned about AI becoming more and more deeply present in essential everyday applications and services.
The new Siri system is expected to be released to users later this year.
The success of this strategy will depend significantly on actual experience as well as the level of security trust that Apple brings to users.