Simply following promises won’t work here. Siri simply being able to do what they promised won’t cut it. The thing with AI integration is, it’s easy to do something, and very hard to make it magical and right. Apple’s current form of ChatGPT answers is horrible, but Google’s Gemini integration in Android doesn’t work either.
What’s wrong about Gemini in Android?
It’s a large language model, designed to write text, that is also given the ability to call certain tools and set timers, etc. But it is slow. It feels less as an assistant on your phone and more like a ChatGPT window you can slide over. Less an assistant, more ChatGPT that can control the system.
Ask current Siri to open the camera, and she will do so. Ask Gemini to open the camera, and it will process your task, and then tell you that it will open the camera, and then, only then, open the application.
So for setting reminders, timers, opening apps and calling people old Siri or the Google Assistant are just so much better than Gemini.
So?
The point is, I don’t care if Apple has their own model or use Google’s as a foundation. What I care about is the integration. This needs to feel magical. Like a personal assistant that understand what you need to do and does so.
I really hope Apple will do what Apple used to do best, produce that wow effect. Even if that might be the last wow effect under current leadership, Tim Cook needs to make sure to make this right. Apple used to be the company that’s late, but when they finally release the thing, everybody copies and we’re all having that “wow, that’s how it’s done” thought. They need this Steve Jobs effect here, that bullet proof piece of magic. The thing that simply works. Cause in recent times, they have this all to rarely.
But they need to produce this here.
They need it to feel magical the first time we use it. And bullet proof. As bullet proof as we haven’t seen any LLM out there behave.
Let’s see if they can.