Siri needs more than just a ‘Hey’. If we’re honest, Siri’s current reputation as a voice assistant isn’t that great, and for years now it’s been relegated to little more than the digital equivalent of a light switch.
Will ‘Apple Intelligence’ finally make Siri useful?
and what that could mean for your small business.
You might have used it to set your alarm if you’ve forgotten to do that before getting tucked up in bed, but if you want it to help you find an emergency plumber at 11 o’clock at night – good luck. Trying asking it to recommend a new Chinese Restaurant for you to try – I’d get a better answer from the dog. The pre-AI Siri has become a symbol of frustration with Apple users, more likely to misunderstand you than understand you – not a lot has changed since 2020 when I asked Siri to “call Dan Green” and was told in response that my phone doesn’t have “Gangrene” in it’s Contact. Good to know I suppose, but not what I was after.
In all seriousness, this lack of utility has presented Apple with a real problem in a world where AI agents like Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT are becoming increasingly sophisticated and genuinely useful. Siri’s shortcomings have never been so apparent. Have Apple missed an opportunity? That would be very unlikely, and if they do manage to turn Siri’s fate around, that could be a game changer, not just consumers, but for us as businesses too.
So where do we go from here? If you’re an Apple user like me, you’ll probably be aware of the buzz around “Apple Intelligence” and the potential promise of a revamped Siri powered by a large language model (LLM) AI like ChatGPT. Imagine every iPhone, iPad and Mac user suddenly being gifted a Siri that can actually hold a conversation, understand complex requests, and provide genuinely useful information in an instant. Will “Apple Intelligence” live up to the hype, and if it does, what does that mean for your business?
This post is the first in a series of posts where we’ll be taking a deeper look at the potential opportunities this might present, especially for local and small to medium sized businesses, and what we can do about that now to prepare for not just an AI powered Siri, but for a future where voice search and AI assistants play a much bigger role in our day to day lives.
In my next post, we’ll look specifically at how an AI powered Siri could change how Apple users search for local services.
Stay tuned.