Apple is expected to overhaul Siri with iOS 18 as part of its generative AI push, and a new report from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman sheds light on what to expect from the company’s revamped voice assistant, including more precise commands, and more.
Per the report, Siri will gain the ability to understand hundreds of new commands thanks to a new AI system that automatically analyzes controls on an app-by-app basis and enables them to be interpreted by Siri. Users will be able to ask Siri for more precise tasks where every single control of a given app will be controlled by users’ voice. This change will be enabled by a revamp of Siri’s infrastructure enabled by Apple’s in-house Large Language Model (LLM).
The new system will allow the assistant to control and navigate an iPhone or iPad with more precision. That includes being able to open individual documents, moving a note to another folder, sending or deleting an email, opening a particular publication in Apple News, emailing a web link, or even asking the device for a summary of an article.
Bloomberg
The new Siri capabilities will initially be limited to Apple’s built-in iOS apps, and it’s unclear when these features will make it to third-party apps. Apple is also working to allow Siri to understand and act on chained commands, where users will get to ask multiple commands in a single voice query.
The new Siri is described as one of Apple’s more intricate and impressive AI initiatives for iOS 18, and will run both on-device in addition to cloud processing. However, the report warns that many of Siri’s new features won’t be ready as part of iOS 18.0 when the software publicly launches in September. Instead, Apple plans to roll out some new features as part of an update to iOS 18 sometime in 2025.
Beyond the revamped Siri, Apple will incorporate AI across every corner of iOS 18 and other software platforms set to be announced in under two weeks at WWDC 2024. AI features will span Safari, Spotlight Search, Messages, Photos, notifications summary, and voice transcription.
Many of Apple’s AI features will be processed on-device. However, most of these features will require an iPhone 15 Pro and later to work, and an M1 chip for the iPad and Mac.
