We all know that Siri as a virtual assistant with a voice that lives inside you iPhone. But in the future, Siri could be much more than a way to manage your Apple devices hands-free. It could evolve into the connective tissue between future Apple products, from smart glasses a home screenswhich may determine whether Apple can make another breakthrough as significant as the iPhone.
Voice-controlled gadgets are nothing new; Siri has been available on the iPhone for 13 years, and both Amazon and Google managed to make the act of barking commands at home appliances a practical shortcut rather than a futuristic (and maybe a little silly) concept.
But if anything has become clear over the past two years, it’s this generative AI — or AI that can create content and provide conversational responses based on training data — is propelling virtual assistants into their next era. Now that voice assistants are getting better at reasoning from voice, images, and text, they can evolve into conversational interfaces rather than just question-and-answer bots.
So what does this mean for Siri? There is a belief that as generative artificial intelligence advances, the interfaces on the phones, laptops and tablets we use every day will become more voice-driven and less touch-centric, which could lead to new types of devices. That means Siri could end up being the key touchpoint for Apple products in the future, making Siri’s growth even more crucial. It’s not just about keeping up OpenAI i Google; Siri’s future growth could have a bigger impact than ever on how future Apple products are received.
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Siri could be at the center of Apple’s next devices
Pictured: Ray-Ban Meta glasses (left) and Apple Vision Pro (right). If Apple ever releases a pair of smart glasses like the Meta Ray-Bans, Siri will likely be a big part of it.
Siri is a big part of it Apple Intelligence, Apple’s push to equip its iPhones, iPads and Macs with more AI features. For example, Siri will get better at using the personal context stored on your phone to answer highly individualized questions, such as being able to act based on the content of your phone’s screen (such as Google Assistant Gemini it can already be done on Android). Siri also has new insights into Apple products, which means you can ask her for technical support.
But new AI features for phonesincluding Apple Intelligence and other similar Android-based services, they still don’t feel monumentally different or meaningful. For the iPhone, I think Siri could be the key to changing that. The biggest promise of AI on our phones, in my opinion, is having an assistant that can make better sense of all the data, photos, videos, apps, and notifications stored on our devices to present us with the relevant information when the we need While only Apple knows what the future holds for Apple Intelligence, the company’s current focus indicates that Siri could be moving in that direction.
But Apple Intelligence is just the beginning. Apple is reportedly working on a class of new devices that will likely rely more on voice input, such as smart glasses and a wall-mounted smart home display, according to reports. Bloomberg. Apple is reportedly evaluating the smart glasses category in an attempt to potentially compete with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which can answer questions based on what the wearer is looking at.
If Apple were to launch a similar alternative, it’s hard to imagine Siri not playing an important role in the device’s functionality. The quality of Siri’s responses would certainly have a big impact on the usefulness of a pair of Apple’s smart glasses.
Then there’s the other area Apple is said to be exploring: smart home devices. The company is said to be developing a wall display powered by Siri and Apple Intelligence that would be used to manage home devices, control apps and make FaceTime calls, it has reported. Bloomberg. While the device could run software that resembles a combination of the iPhone’s standby mode and the Apple Watch’s WatchOS interface, it will be designed primarily for voice interactions, the report says. This alone suggests that Siri will play a starring role on the device.
Read more: Why Google’s New VP of Android Says ‘People Don’t Want to Hear About AI’
Why these new products would be so important
Siri could play a big role in Apple’s future devices, if it ventures into new territories like smart glasses and smart displays.
The success of these new products is crucial for a couple of reasons. First, all eyes are on Apple’s AI ambitions, as OpenAI and Google have put the spotlight on the AI race. And second, Apple’s digital services and wearables divisions have been instrumental in showing that the company has new areas for growth that aren’t entirely dependent on the iPhone, helping to satiate Wall Street when smartphone sales smart are on the move.
New devices like the ones Bloomberg says are in the works could go a long way toward growing both of these areas. Smart glasses, for example, could be seen as an evolution of AirPods in a sense, while the smart home screen could strengthen digital services like Apple Music.
Nor would it be the first time Apple has developed a new gadget with Siri at its core. He threw the first HomePod smart speaker in 2018 as a response to Amazon and Google’s offerings, with the goal of attracting users with audio quality superior to what rivals were offering at the time. But the HomePod fell short in the same way, largely because Apple’s smart home platform and Siri were limited by comparison.
For the next wave of products, Apple will need to avoid making the same mistake. That’s why refining and expanding Siri’s capabilities now, before it expands into new product categories, would be a smart move. Bloomberg reports that Apple is doing just that; The company is working on a more conversational version of Siri that can handle two-way verbal exchanges.
For Apple, the bar is particularly high. Products like Apple Intelligence, smart glasses or a smart home display are not enough to work well. It’s the Apple ecosystem and the way hardware and software work together that make an Apple product what it is, a point Apple often acknowledges and takes pride in. If we’re really moving towards a world where virtual assistants don’t just help you navigate. the operating system however to become the operating system, then Siri will become fundamental rather than complementary.
