• Apple’s progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been slow, and features promised in June remain delayed.
  • At a Siri team meeting, senior director Robby Walker acknowledged the frustration within the team, describing the delays as “ugly.”
  • Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
  • Challenges include quality issues that caused these features to malfunction up to a third of the time and conflicts with Apple’s marketing division over showcasing incomplete features.
  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.
  • Senior executives, including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, are reportedly taking personal accountability for the delays.
  • Walker emphasized that the team’s work is impressive and that the delayed features will be released once they meet Apple’s standards.
  • drperil@lemm.ee
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    34 minutes ago

    Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

    I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

  • midori matcha@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Apple Intelligence hasn’t been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

    For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually “Siri” rather than “Hey Siri”), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

    What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      48 minutes ago

      Interesting timing, where I’m seeing the opposite. All my Amazon devices suddenly can’t turn on a simple light switch, and one appears to have somehow factory reset.

      However Siri works perfectly. I use a button rather than wake word, but then it dies actually turn on my light

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      15 hours ago

      Right? Hink of everything else I can do with that space and computing power. Not to mention the fuckin environmental devastation we’d curb.

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    A while ago I set up a Siri shortcut that opens ChatGPT in voice mode. Now I can just say “hey siri, ask the demon” and in a moment start talking to ChatGPT with no further commands and zero buttons pressed throughout. It answers in voice mode.

    This is pretty useful for things like doing units conversions while my hands are sticky during cooking, or just doing simple information lookups while my hands are busy. I use ChatGPT responsibly, never trusting it for things that aren’t one-dimensional information retrievals and summarization. It works great for me for like 50-60% of the things I used to Google. Internet search is, once again, just for finding websites, like it should be.

    What’s my point? We don’t need Siri Apple Intelligence to ship. There’s already something better. And it runs on my iPhone 14, which isn’t even compatible with Apple Flatulence.

    • invertedspear@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      I’ve never used Apple intelligence and Siri alone has done a fine job for unit conversions, info lookups, and most any other things. No need to fire up chat GPT for those basic uses

  • ofcourse@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

    But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

    1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
    2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
    3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
    4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.
    • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.

      That’s literally never going to happen. Closed-source proprietary stuff is their MO.

  • ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    AI is overrated in almost every implementation that isn’t scientific research. The buzzword stock hype machine fake growth cycles are going to kill the tech industry.

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.

    Tech companies not understanding exponential complexity is one of the funnier things to come out of recent years.

  • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    I don’t want that on my phone. I just want a dumb program that sets alerts and schedules, I don’t want it interpreting information and I doubt most people really need that function on a phone.

    • tauren@lemm.ee
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      23 hours ago

      Yeah, but smartphones have stopped offering anything new. I recently upgraded my 8-year-old device, and I hardly notice any difference. I bet other customers see that too. They are desperately trying to find the next big thing. It’s astonishing, however, that all these companies completely ignore the fact that their customers don’t even want AI features.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        But but but . … they’ve spent Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on this!!! You HAVE to buy it!!! Noooooooooo

  • PattyMcB@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The whole industry is a shit show right now with the “AI race”

    I don’t want to be a software developer anymore because it’s become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.