Apple is working on LLM Siri again

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Apple has been struggling with its Apple Intelligence efforts and its digital assistant, Siri. A new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman explains how things went wrong and how Apple is now trying to fix it.

At the heart of the issue is Siri. Apple tried to quickly catch up with AI trends by adding new, advanced AI features to the old version of Siri. 

However, Apple’s attempt to mix old and new technologies led to constant bugs and a messy user experience. 

Apple’s head of software, Craig Federighi, didn’t want to pour a lot of money into AI because the company prefers clear goals before investing heavily. 

But with AI, you often don’t know the result until after you’ve made the investment. 

As a result, Apple waited too long to buy the powerful computer chips (GPUs) needed for training AI, putting them behind competitors.

Apple also started working on its own AI tools much later than others. Their AI chief, John Giannandrea, didn’t think people really wanted chatbots and was hesitant about building one like ChatGPT. 

He also didn’t push hard enough for resources or fit in well with Apple’s top leadership, which limited progress. Eventually, he was removed from overseeing Siri and AI products.

Apple’s marketing also promised smarter AI features before they were ready, leading to delays and customer disappointment.

Now, Bloomberg reports Apple is going back to building a completely new version of Siri, powered by an LLM (large language model), developed by a team in Zurich. (Via: The Verge) 

This version is designed to be more natural in conversation and better at understanding complex requests.

To improve AI training while protecting privacy, Apple plans to use on-device data from iPhones and send only synthetic versions back to its servers. 

Siri might also soon search the web more intelligently, like tools such as Perplexity. Apple hopes this major overhaul will finally bring Siri up to speed.

What do you think about an AI-powered Siri? Do you think we can expect good results from Apple after how Apple Intelligence turned out? Tell us below in the comments, or via our Twitter or Facebook.