I’m sorry, the old Siri can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Cause she’s DEAD! Well not really, but Taylor Swift fans will have to forgive paraphrasing “Look What You Made Me Do” as after years of Siri often serving as a punchline, this next upgrade could give Apple’s virtual assistant the last laugh.
At WWDC 2024 on Monday, Apple announced some major improvements coming to Siri. Thanks to newly introduced Apple Intelligence and an exciting partnership between OpenAI and Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, Siri is getting a much-needed overhaul that’ll help it properly compete with other virtual assistants.
The new Siri will be “more natural, more contextually relevant, and of course, more personal to you,” according to Kelsey Peterson, Director of Machine Learning and AI at Apple. Among all the features coming to Apple’s upgraded virtual assistant, these are the 5 we can’t wait to try the most.
5. Speak to Siri more naturally
If you’re prone to fumbling over your words when asking Siri a question, only to be met with “Can you repeat that?” or “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” you’ll love the upgraded Siri.
At WWDC 2024, Peterson tested Siri’s “richer language understanding capabilities,” by saying this to Siri: “What does the weather look like for tomorrow at Muir Beach? Oh, wait, I meant Muir Woods!”
Siri correctly pulled up the forecast for Muir Woods, ignoring the first bit of information Peterson redacted.
And because Siri now understands conversational context, Peterson followed up with, “Create an event for a hike there tomorrow at 9 a.m.,” and Siri understood that ‘there’ was Muir Woods.
This is one of those features that may draw some scoffing from Android fans as Google Assistant has offered contextual awareness for over five years, but if it works as intended it’s an excellent addition to Siri. It also looks to match Google’s current offering, so Apple may catch up with a single update.
4. Use Siri as your ultimate Apple how-to guru
With Siri’s “extensive product knowledge,” it can now field thousands of questions about any Apple product — iPhones, iPads, Macs — and help you find the perfect how-to guide to fix an issue or carry out a task.
And because Siri can process conversational language, you don’t even need to call a feature by its name in order to be understood.
An example question used at WWDC 2024 is “How can I write a message now and have it be delivered tomorrow?” With its new repository of information about features and settings, Siri knows this question is about how to schedule text messages.
This is a brilliant addition by Apple that should help to boost its favorite stat, customer satisfaction. Users are forever frustrated by an inability to figure out how a given feature works, as long as they are familiar with Siri this should be mostly a problem of the past.
3. Utilize on-screen awareness
Apple Intelligence will give the new Siri on-screen awareness, which broadens the scope of what Siri is capable of helping you with. Siri will be able to look to what’s on your screen for context, and carry out more complex commands.
Here’s just one example of on-screen awareness in action. If your friend texts you their new address, you could ask Siri to add the address to their contact card, and Siri will be able to find the address, understand whose contact details you’re updating based on the person you’re in a conversation with, and switch apps to update their contact card.
Google has toyed with on-screen contextual features on Android, such as Circle to Search and What’s on my screen, but if this works as advertised this is a case where Apple will surpass what we’ve seen on Android so far.
2. Type to Siri rather than talk
It’s not always possible to speak a command or question to Siri. You might be in the middle of a lecture, on a public train, or just at home and don’t feel like talking.
One update for the new and improved Siri is the option to type rather than talk. By double-tapping at the bottom of the screen, you can switch from voice to text, and type commands to Siri like “Set an alarm for 7 a.m.” or “Remind me to study on Saturday for next week’s test.”
Android fans are going to be ready for this one. This feature with a very similar implementation came to Android in 2017.
1. Use in-app actions across multiple apps
One of the coolest new features coming to Siri is the ability to perform multiple actions across different apps. Siri can gather information and context from different apps on your phone to make your life easier.
Peterson gave the best example for this with a scenario where she needs to pick up her mom from the airport.
She asks, “Siri, when is my mom’s flight landing?” And Siri quickly responds with a real-time flight tracking update after grabbing the flight details from an email from her mom.
Peterson then asks, “What’s our lunch plan?” and “How long will it take us to get there from the airport?” And with access to Messages, Mail, and Maps, Siri can handle all of these requests from the home screen, without Peterson needing to open up all these apps herself.
Sure, this one example may only save you a minute, but over time, those saved minutes will quickly add up, and this is a perfect example of the type of experience Apple loves to create. You aren’t thinking about all of these apps working together, you just ask your iPhone to do something for you and it’s done.
Outlook
While we won’t be able to test these features until iOS 18 launches in beta later this summer, it all looks very promising, and we’re excited.
Siri was the first virtual assistant, but was somewhat quickly surpassed in skills and capabilities by Google Assistant. Other competitors like Amazon Alexa and recently ChatGPT also seemed to eclipse Apple’s offering, so it’s exciting to think that Siri may finally get the upgrades Apple fans have wanted for years, making it just as amazing as it was when it first launched.
Needless to say, Google isn’t standing still either. Last month at Google I/O 2024 we got our glimpse at what Android 15 has coming this fall and Google Gemini is looking to supercharge the virtual assistant for Android users.
While Apple borrowed liberally from Android for some of these Siri updates, there’s little doubt Google will pick up some tips from Apple’s announcements. The good news is that while the arguments can rage on about which OS did it first or best, the users on both sides benefit from the best ideas rising to the top. Apple putting more pressure on Google in the virtual assistant space is nothing but a positive for everyone.
Although these new Siri features seem most suited to iPhone users, they’ll also be coming to iPad and Mac later this year. Check out our WWDC 2024 recap for more major news you might’ve missed.