Apple’s problem improving Siri with AI comes down to one incorrect assumption about consumers.
There are times when you have to wonder what Apple has its finger on because, occasionally, it isn’t on the pulse of the public. A good example of this was mentioned by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his weekly online Power On newsletter. For some reason, perhaps for self-preservation, some Apple employees in the tech giant’s AI group came to the conclusion that there was no reason why Apple should develop a ChatGPT-style chatbot for the iPhone.
According to today’s report, top executives in both the software and marketing units in Cupertino came to the conclusion that there is only limited consumer interest in chatbots. Perhaps what Apple isn’t seeing is that chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are great at answering your queries, something that Siri fails miserably at. The problem is that chatbots can’t set timers and alarms or handle any tasks related to your phone.
Apple does allow Siri to hand off questions it can’t answer to ChatGPT if the user agrees to this on a question-by-question basis. But the responses from ChatGPT are limited. If you rely on the Siri/ChatGPT combo to answer your questions requiring what Apple calls «world knowledge», you might be better off installing the ChatGPT app and using it for all your queries. You’ll get more in-depth answers from the app than the responses that come from Siri/ChatGPT.
