The fake promise of better Siri
Apple Intelligence is technically lots of things, but there’s only one feature with the potential to actually meaningfully change the way you use your phone. That would be Siri, which Apple said last year it had turned from a quasi-helpful voice assistant into an AI-powered helper that could understand everything about you and accomplish things on your behalf. Sounds cool, right? It was one of the flagship features of the iPhone 16 lineup, a big part of the way Apple promoted its new devices. Except it doesn’t exist. And it won’t anytime soon.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about exactly where things went wrong with Siri — and with the whole gadget industry, which became so enraptured with the promise of AI that it sort of forgot to make good gadgets. Nilay and David discuss the problems and promise with Alexa, the still-enticing ideas behind “ambient computing,†and what it’ll take for Apple to make things right. (Side note: if you haven’t read John Gruber’s essay on the subject at Daring Fireball, you should — we recorded this episode before it published, but it’s an excellent summary of the situation.)
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