Peter Griffin: BusinessDesk tech columnist on Apple announcing an AI upgrade for Siri

Apple's announced digital assistant, Siri, is getting an upgrade - expected later this year - to become Siri AI.  

The company is promising a better artificial intelligence experience for users. 

With the help of Google, Siri will remember past conversations, have a more conversational tone, and help across apps. 

BusinessDesk's Peter Griffin says Apple isn't trying to compete with the AI giants. 

"This is really to supercharge the features on an iPhone, or on your Mac with the Safari browser - making it more intelligent, maybe being able to talk to your photos app to select a number of photos." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right to your phones. Siris getting a makeover as
Apple catches up in the AI race. The update, to
be launched later this year will have a more conversational
chatbot and help across apps like Safari, and it could
bring the fifteen year old assistant Siri up to speed
with all its AI competitors, because Apple has been losing
out to AI competitors. Pete Griffin is the tech columnist

(00:23):
for Business Desk and he joins me, now, hello, Peter.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hey, you do Andrew very good?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
So what does the upgrade do?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well? You know the key thing I think people will
realize when this actually comes to fruition, because they haven't
put an exact date on that yet. It will remember
the conversations that it's had with you, and it will
be able to carry on a conversation, not just starting,
you know, another query. It will remember if you ask
it about the weather, or you're planning a trip, or

(00:51):
remember all of that context to inform its next answer.
So that makes it genuinely more useful. Now, this is
something that they've teamed up with Google to provide. People
will be familiar probably with Google Gemini, which is the
chatbot that Google has built with artificial intelligence. Apple has
been working on its own upgrade of Siri for a

(01:13):
couple of years now. It's been sort of an abortive
attempt to do that. So it's thrown in the towel.
It's got Google in and so behind the service will
lie those Google, uh you know AI tools.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I understand she's going to be a little bit more
expressive as well, So she's she's gonna she's gonna have
some vocal fry in there. But the thing is, is
this enough to take on the AI powerhouses like Chat,
TBT or the Gemini that you mentioned.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Look, I don't think really that is in the sites
for Apple, you know, being like Anthropics, Claude or open
Ai where people pay, you know a lot of money
every month to have this as a productivity tool in
their life. This is really to supercharge the features on
the iPhone or on your Mac. You know. So you
talked about the Safari brows and making that more intelligence.

(01:59):
Maybe in your camera, being able to talk to your
photos app to select a number of photos or search
your photos, that sort of thing. Apple isn't going after
the ones that have focused more on business applications off AI.
But there's a lot of expectation here because they sort
of failed the first time around. That was seen as
a big strategic blunder for Apple, So they've got a

(02:23):
lot to live up to here, and the market didn't
really respond that well to the announcement today because they
seem to be hedging their beds. They haven't put a
firm announcement for when they're going to launch this. They
won't be launching it in Europe until later for some
legal or regulatory reasons. So it's not a very convincing story,
and we'll we'll have to wait and see how useful

(02:44):
this actually is. Because, as we've discussed before, trust in
artificial intelligence is relatively low all around the world. The
last thing Apple wants to do as a supposedly high
trust tech player is eroded even further.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
And all this is happening as Chief executive Tim Cook
bids farewell. So they're taking the advantage with new management
to revamp the products.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, and they're putting in the guy who was the
head of hardware, so that shows that they're still committed
to hardware being at the center of the Apple experience.
They'll probably come out with some smart glasses that's the
next big product off the line. And yeah, so I
don't think that the AI thing really is a shining beacon.

(03:26):
For Tim Cook as he departs, what he delivered over
the last decade of fifteen years was actually incredible billions
of dollars of wealth for shareholders just by propping up
the monopoly. Really, that is the iPhone. It's just a
juggernaut and continues to make a lot of money for
that company.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
And speaking of the iPhone, they've been pumping out updates
all the time. I mean, I think we worked to
number twenty six, number twenty seven. I'm stuck on eighteen
because I don't have enough storage. Are they pumping out
these updates too much? And are we failing to keep
up with.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yes, so twenty seven is coming out, you know, just
some incremental tweets, And I think that is where we're
at in the mobile space at the moment. You don't
need to upgrade every year or even every three years.
I know people like you who have a decade old iPhone.
Eventually they will cut off access to certain services just
just because they can't continue the security updates and that

(04:24):
sort of thing. But the real messages be quite happy
buying last year's model of the iPhone, and you'll get
it for two thirds or even fifty percent of the price.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's why I'm still on an iPhone twelve Mini.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well, good, good for you. You're getting value for money.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
AI. I love my little phone and I thank you
so much. Peter Griffin from Business Desk.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
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