Apple might launch a smarter Siri next year

It may not be immediately apparent, but Apple is reportedly trying hard to catch up with competitors in the field of AI.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company has been caught off guard by the rise of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools, but it's now investing heavily in various facets of AI. In monetary terms, Apple is reportedly spending roughly $1 billion per year on AI, with senior vice presidents in charge of AI and software engineering, John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, leading the efforts.

From the consumer's point of view, these efforts should result in something long overdue: a smarter version of Siri. Gurman says we could see a revamp of Apple's digital assistant, driven by new generative AI tech, as soon as next year (he does note, however, that concerns about AI might move the launch further into the future). Details on how the new Siri might work are scarce, but the report says that Federighi's software group is working to improve how Siri and Apple's Messages app respond to questions and auto-complete sentences.

It's not just Siri that's getting the AI treatment. The report says AI might get integrated into Apple Music, with new features including automatically generated playlists similar to Spotify's. Pages might offer better writing tips, and Keynote might get better at helping users automatically create slide decks. Developers using Xcode might get new, helpful tools for writing apps. And even the company's internal customer service apps might get the AI treatment, hopefully with improved results.

It's not the first time we've heard about Apple investing heavily in AI. In August, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple has invested billions in generative AI, and a report in September outlined the company's internal efforts with regards to AI, as well as new features coming to Siri.

But on the record, Apple has been quite timid about AI. The company never mentioned AI at its WWDC event in June, and major new features are introduced to Siri fairly rarely. Apple's smart assistant has been around for 12 years, compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT which (amazingly) launched less than a year ago, and yet it feels like Siri is lagging behind. One issue that's holding Apple back, according to Gurman's report, is the question of whether to deploy generative AI entirely on its devices, which is faster and better for privacy, or to have some parts of the system reside in the cloud, which would allow for more advanced features.

In any case, Apple better figure this out fast, because its competitors don't seem to be wasting any time.