As expected, Apple’s assistant is about to get much more helpful thanks to a load of new AI-powered capabilities. During WWDC, the company previewed a new version of Siri that can take actions on your behalf and understand a wide range of new queries.
The new version of Siri has a better understanding of the apps on your phone and will be able to take more than 100 actions based on your activity and device. For example, you could ask Siri to show you specific photos or memories in your Photos app or to find tracking details for an expected delivery from an email in the Mail app.
Siri will also be able to perform some tasks for you, like adding an address to a contact card, tweak a photo, or share a summary of your notes in an email. Third-party developers will also be able to take advantage of these new capabilities with a new “app intents framework” that will allow them to tap into Apple Intelligence and make certain actions compatible with Siri.
Apple said that Siri’s new AI powers could be a major time saver for otherwise tedious tasks. One example offered by the company was the need to fill in a driver’s license number in an online form. Instead of searching your photos yourself, you could ask Siri and it would be able to find the image of your license, grab the number and fill in the form. Siri can also answer questions based on details from your messages and emails, like remembering your dinner reservations or providing up-to-date flight tracking for a previously-shared reservation.
Another major change is that Siri will no longer be only a voice-activated assistant. Apple is adding a “type to Siri” feature that makes it a bit closer to the experience of other generative AI chatbots. When you do chat with Siri, the experience should feel more natural as the assistant will be better able to respond to queries when the command isn’t spoken perfectly. Apple demoed how Siri could respond to a request about weather conditions even when the speaker stumbled over their words and misspoke. Additionally, the assistant can provide help and answer about iPhone capabilities, like “I need to scan a document.”
Siri will also be able to take advantage of chatGPT, thanks to Apple’s newly-announced OpenAI partnership. For some text-based queries, users can opt to get an answer from chatGPT from within the new type to Siri interface.
Apple didn’t specify when all of the new Siri capabilities will launch, but said the new version of its assistant will be coming to iPhone, iPad and the Mac. The revamped Siri is part of Apple’s push into “personal intelligence,” which Tim Cook described as the “next big step” for the company.
Catch up here for all the news out of Apple’s WWDC 2024.
