Apple’s new Siri AI, set to debut with macOS Golden Gate in September, promises improved personal context understanding and integration, but skepticism remains due to past misleading marketing and reliance on ChatGPT. Picture: Michael Sherman/Google Gemini
Image: Michael Sherman/Google Gemini
Call me skeptical, but even though Apple demonstrated some new functionality for its overhauled Siri AI at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week, I’ll believe it when I see it working on my iPhone.
If there’s one thing Apple has never done particularly well, it’s AI. In fact, I previously wrote about why I believe Apple’s AI efforts amounted to little more than a scam.
The massive redesign will be much better integrated into iOS and macOS.
The new macOS, called Golden Gate, will also be fully integrated with Siri AI. Interestingly, Apple no longer seems to be leaning as heavily on the “Apple Intelligence” branding and is instead simply referring to it as AI.
With the new Siri AI, the assistant will finally be able to understand personal context in prompts, something previous versions - including the current one - have struggled to do.
However, there’s one big problem: Apple promised its AI-capable devices would be able to do this two years ago.
Until now, Siri has been little more than a basic voice assistant, despite Apple putting out what many would consider misleading information about its capabilities in an aggressive marketing campaign featuring Hollywood actor Bella Ramsey in 2024. That advertisement has since been removed by Apple.
It promised a number of features that simply didn’t exist and ultimately led to a $250 million lawsuit accusing Apple of false advertising.
Take the current state of Apple Image Playground as an example. The app featured prominently in Apple’s AI marketing campaign, but in reality it’s little more than a child’s toy that creates cartoon-style images from real ones. It’s difficult to see any meaningful purpose behind either its concept or execution.
Even the AI currently available on Apple devices relies heavily on a ChatGPT integration, and unless you already subscribe to ChatGPT, you’re limited by the restrictions of the free version.
With the new Siri AI and macOS Golden Gate arriving in September, I sincerely hope these features prove to be genuinely useful rather than another case of artificial hype.