Apple is testing generative AI concepts that could one day be destined for Siri, despite fundamental problems with the virtual assistant's design, it is now reported.
At the company's annual AI summit last month, employees were apparently briefed on Apple's large language model and other AI tools. Apple engineers, including members of the Siri team, had been testing speech generation concepts "on a weekly basis" in response to the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT. These next-generation AI technologies showed how Siri, Alexa and other voice assistants had lost their lead in the AI race, the report. Siri, in particular, has been repeatedly stymied on the path to meaningful improvements. In an interview with the New York Times, former Apple engineer John Burkey, who worked on Siri and was tasked with improving it in 2014, explained that the voice assistant was based on "clunky code that took weeks to update basic features."
Siri consists of a “cumbersome design”
Its "clumsy design" made it very difficult for engineers to add new features. Siri's database, for example, contains a large list of words in nearly two dozen languages, making it "a big snowball." When someone wants to add a word to the Siri database, Burkey said, "it ends up in a big pile." This means that simple updates, such as adding new phrases, require rebuilding the entire Siri database, which can take up to six weeks. Adding more complicated features, such as new search tools, can take up to a year.
ChatGPT sets new standards: Generative AI in focus of Apple, Meta and Amazon
Therefore, there was no way for Siri to become a "creative assistant" like ChatGPT, Burkey says. Earlier this week, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, its next-generation AI engine that enables even more advanced responses from ChatGPT. Last week, DigiTimes reported that the growing interest in generative AI sparked by ChatGPT has led to a reassessment of technology development at major companies such as Apple, Meta and Amazon. These companies are making efforts to ensure that Microsoft does not maintain its lead in the AI field. Apple and Tesla in particular are in the process of rethinking their AI approach. (Photo by Chor Muang / Bigstockphoto)
