It’s pretty much common knowledge by this point that Siri is lacking compared to rival assistants and artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT. But according to a new report, Apple might be about to inject it with some much-needed power that could potentially transform it into a true force in AI.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman claims that Apple is essentially building its own ChatGPT rival that would bring chatbot capabilities to Siri.
The company has reportedly created its own ‘Answers, Knowledge and Information’ team to do this – and if it works, it could fix one of the biggest gripes I have with Siri. Too often, I ask Siri a question, only for it to bring up a search engine results page and cheerily respond with “Here’s what I found on the web.”
Other times, it’ll suggest handing over to ChatGPT instead of answering the question itself. For example, just try asking Siri a relatively simple question – “what is the most common type of tree in North America?”, for instance – and it’ll ask if you want to enlist ChatGPT for this task.
Both outcomes highlight how incapable Siri is compared to AI tools like ChatGPT. It’s like Siri is hoisting the white flag. “I don’t know what the answer is, but maybe you can find it yourself?” seems to be the message it’s conveying.
And there’s another aspect to this. Whereas ChatGPT can actually find the answer for me, Siri’s response is the equivalent of those sarcastic “let me Google that for you” web pages that rudely hint at your own stupidity for not simply searching for the answer yourself. That’s never a good look for a personal assistant like Siri.
But the bigger problem is that handing off to Google or ChatGPT doesn’t actually solve the problem I wanted a solution for in the first place, and it misses the entire reason why people ask Siri questions in the first place.
People ask Siri because they want answers, not because they want to do the heavy lifting themselves. If the outcome I’m looking for is a Google search results page, I could have opened Safari and done that myself. I wanted an answer, not more hunting around.
And that’s the key difference between tools like ChatGPT and Siri right now: ChatGPT provides answers, while Siri does not. Even when Siri ropes ChatGPT into the situation, it’s an extra step compared to Siri just giving you the result you wanted. Whatever the question, Siri is rarely the answer.
A shot in the arm
Hopefully, Apple adding these “answer” capabilities to Siri could be the shot in the arm its virtual assistant desperately needs. That prospect is certainly more exciting to me than some of the other delayed Siri features, like its ability to work within apps or understand your personal context.
While those features are interesting and might grab the headlines, I don’t see myself using them very often. They’re more complex and specialized, whereas asking Siri a simple question is a much more common occurrence for me and, I suspect, the majority of Apple users.
Still, questions remain over how Apple will transform Siri into a proper answer engine. How will the company train Siri to be able to answer more questions? Will Siri simply search online for results, or will it be able to rely on stored knowledge? How will Siri be trained in a way that aligns with Apple’s much-vaunted privacy principles? And will it take away traffic from third-party websites, withering the web in the way ChatGPT and Google’s own AI overviews are threatening to do?
And then there’s the question of when Siri’s chatbot update will arrive. Apple is reportedly targeting a spring 2026 launch date for its next-generation Siri features, but that hasn’t previously included any mention of a chatbot, which could take a long time to develop. With AI developments moving at breakneck speed, will a Siri-based chatbot be able to keep up with its rivals?
Those questions will be answered in due course, but in the meantime, I’m looking forward to a more capable (and, frankly, less useless) virtual assistant. If Apple can offer these features in a way that respects your privacy and doesn’t rip off the world’s online content, then I won’t mind if Siri is a little less capable than ChatGPT. As long as it’s more capable than it is right now.
After all, the whole point of using an AI helper for search is to get actual answers, not a list of results that I could have searched for myself. If Apple can pull it off, this could be the upgrade Siri has been in dire need of for years.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
