14 DAY TRIAL // Siri is an integral part of the experience with Apple devices, including iPhones and iPads, and the Cupertino-based tech giant has been working for years to make the assistant feel as natural as possible.
Obviously, Apple isn’t the only company betting big on this front, and without a doubt, Google is the biggest competitor right now. However, Amazon’s Alexa is also growing bigger, and in some cases, it’s the assistant that helps inspire Apple for future improvements aimed at Siri.
Apple watcher Mark Gurman has recently revealed the way the iPhone maker wants to make Siri act more like a human being. In other words, Apple wants to make the interaction with Siri even more straightforward and natural, so the company plans to drop the “hey” part from the “Hey Siri” wake-up command.
At this point, whenever an Apple user wants to trigger Siri, the first command they must say is “Hey Siri.” Obviously, there are several other ways to wake the assistant, including pressing the Home button on devices where such a feature continues to be available.
Needless to say, given Siri has been around for so long, everything feels pretty natural already, but making the digital assistant feel more like a human being involves several other steps that Apple is apparently very committed to embracing.
As it turns out, Apple is now working on an essential improvement on this front, so the company wants users to be able to wake up Siri simply by saying its name. In other words, saying “Hey Siri” would no longer be necessary, as calling the assistant by name should theoretically trigger it.
Apple wouldn’t be the first company to do it though. While Google Assistant must be triggered with the “Hey Google” command, Alexa works pretty much the same way Apple wants Siri to work as well. This means you can simply say “Alexa” to wake Amazon’s assistant.
But as it turns out, doing the whole thing is much more difficult than most people would be tempted to believe. Training Siri to work with a simplified command takes years, so the company isn’t expected to release this update earlier than 2024. There’s a chance the work on this front would be over earlier than anticipated, in which case Siri would get the update in 2023, but at this point, the target seems to be 2024.
One particular challenge for Apple is to train the digital assistant to understand different accents and dialects. In this case, the “hey” part helped a lot, so expect Apple to improve the initial Siri setup in a way that would make it easier for its AI system to detect when users are calling the digital assistant by its name.
The work on this front has already started, and the updated Siri experience is apparently live on some devices currently being used by Apple employees. This way, the Cupertino-based tech giant hopes it would be able to collect more feedback on the way different accents and dialects are being used to wake Siri, but of course, the company needs a lot more work before being able to release the update to all users out there.
Of course, once the new Siri would be ready for prime time, it would go live on all Apple devices, not just on the iPhone. And as it turns out, Apple’s plan is to bring the new Siri to more third-party apps and services, as the company wants to expand the market share of the digital assistant with the help of other apps and services available for its customers.