• Apple’s progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been slow, and features promised in June remain delayed.
  • At a Siri team meeting, senior director Robby Walker acknowledged the frustration within the team, describing the delays as “ugly.”
  • Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
  • Challenges include quality issues that caused these features to malfunction up to a third of the time and conflicts with Apple’s marketing division over showcasing incomplete features.
  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.
  • Senior executives, including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, are reportedly taking personal accountability for the delays.
  • Walker emphasized that the team’s work is impressive and that the delayed features will be released once they meet Apple’s standards.
    • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Some people bought scam pins/portable assistant that is actually a butchered phone thing, so, yeah.

      • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Tech bros and “influencers” don’t count. We’re talking about real people. All of those devices failed because no one other than those seeking to ride the bleeding edge of technology actually are interested. The most anyone want Siri or Google Assistant to do is set alarms, set appointments, and pick-up/hang-up the phone when you’re on speaker. Sometimes it’s nice to ask it to do a search but the original versions of these did that fine until they started “improving” them with “AI”.

  • mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    A) No executives anywhere are taking personal accountability for anything

    B) I upgraded from the 12 to the 16 for Apple Intelligence and I have yet to see it offer value. A substantial portion of hey Siri voice requests return with “I’m sorry I didn’t get that” even when using the voice transcription feature gets the words right

  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Marketing over promising and making it developments problem. A tale as old as time.

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        They’re likely also winding down development in favour of their new LLM, which certainly isn’t going to help matters.

  • roguesignal@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Siri is so useless. All these years and I use her to basically set timers and reminders.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago
    • Take screenshot of screen
    • Send screenshot to Claude 3.7 or any other decent chatbot. Even GPT-3 is light years smarter than current Siri, but I don’t know it if can analyze images
    • Run Claude’s response through a text-to-Siri-speech layer

    There, now Siri can see your screen. Why can’t Apple accomplish this? Why are megacorps so inept?

    • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      This is the most defensible point. Designing APIs to determine what content on your screen is ok to send to a third party (Apple offers ChatGPT integration) is a decent amount of work.

    • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Spend 5 minutes creating a bash script

      Spend 5 billion dollars on an overly complicated summarizer

      Why the fuck would I wanna write bash

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This whole thing is a textbook example of how bad shady marketing today and can really cause you a lot of pain tomorrow. If Apple had not been so quick to let PR write checks their ass was not ready to cash the conversation around Siri would still just be the casual jokes about it sucking, and not more serious public blackeyes.

  • drperil@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

    I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

  • midori matcha@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Apple Intelligence hasn’t been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

    For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually “Siri” rather than “Hey Siri”), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

    What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Honestly I don’t really want a smart context-aware Siri, I just want something I can give simple, straightforward voice commands to, and get predictable, reliable results.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Interesting timing, where I’m seeing the opposite. All my Amazon devices suddenly can’t turn on a simple light switch, and one appears to have somehow factory reset.

      However Siri works perfectly. I use a button rather than wake word, but then it dies actually turn on my light

      • fishy@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        It’s been theorized that Amazon is progressively making all Alexa devices worse so they can sell you on a subscription based AI version.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Maybe, but they may lose more customers than they expect ….

          There are privacy based devices for “always listening” voice assistants coming on strong

          I already use Siri with a button for a lot. recently it seems able to recognize more of my smarthome devices and it will now prompt to forward more complex queries to ChatGPT

          I’m really down to the intercom feature being the only reason to keep Alexa - I can’t control the devices my kids use at their mom’s house

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      You’ve had AI on your phone for ages. All your pictures are “AI” touched. And no you don’t want the raw output cameras in phones are not that good.

      • MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I was just fine without voice assistants and such. I especially don’t want LLMs being shoved down my throat at every turn.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Right? Hink of everything else I can do with that space and computing power. Not to mention the fuckin environmental devastation we’d curb.