Apple Intelligence has made its debut, yet Siri and Apple’s suite of AI features lag significantly behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, primarily due to the lack of an Apple chatbot. In response, the company has enlisted an experienced internal software leader to steer its AI initiatives in the right direction. Mark Gurman from Bloomberg shares the details:
Apple Inc. executive Kim Vorrath, a veteran known for reviving struggling products and launching significant projects, has a new role focused on enhancing artificial intelligence and Siri.
As a vice president overseeing program management, Vorrath has transitioned to Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division this week. She will serve as a key deputy to AI chief John Giannandrea, according to sources who wish to remain anonymous as the changes have yet to be publicly announced.
Gurman notes that Vorrath played a vital role in successfully bringing the Apple Vision Pro to market. Previously, she was involved with the original iPhone software team in a project management capacity. He adds that she had recently been advising the group reporting to John Giannandrea.
Before joining Giannandrea’s team, Vorrath dedicated several weeks to advising Kelsey Peterson, the former head of program management. Peterson will now report to Vorrath, along with two other AI leaders, Cindy Lin and Marc Schonbrun. Giannandrea, who made the transition to Apple from Google in 2018, communicated these changes in a memo to staff.
Apple still needs to launch the AI-enhanced version of Siri demonstrated during the iOS 18 preview at the developer conference in June 2024. The current implementation is fairly restricted. We anticipate the new version of Siri to be available in beta with the upcoming iOS 18.4 beta, as iOS 18.3 is almost ready for public release.
Here’s what to expect from the upgraded Siri featuring Apple Intelligence:
With onscreen awareness, Siri will gradually gain the capability to comprehend and act on users’ content across more apps. For instance, if a user receives a new address via text from a friend, they could say, “Add this address to his contact card.”
Thanks to Apple Intelligence, Siri will perform hundreds of new actions across Apple and third-party applications. A user could say, “Find that cicada article from my Reading List,” or “Send the barbecue pictures from Saturday to Malia,” and Siri will manage it.
Siri will also offer personalized intelligence based on the user’s on-device data. For example, a user could request, “Play that podcast Jamie suggested,” and Siri would find and play the episode without requiring the user to recall whether it was mentioned in a message or email. Alternatively, they could ask, “When does Mom’s flight arrive?” and Siri would retrieve the flight information while cross-referencing live tracking for the arrival time.
However, iOS 18.3 highlights some of the hurdles facing Apple’s AI efforts. For example, Apple has decided to disable notification summaries for news and entertainment alerts due to a series of incorrect summaries that misled users. Other notification summaries will be indicated in italicized text to differentiate between the summary and the actual notification text.
For more information, read the complete report from Bloomberg.
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