{"id":494935,"date":"2026-01-05T21:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T21:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/494935\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T21:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T21:17:12","slug":"i-think-apple-should-take-this-radical-approach-to-the-new-siri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/494935\/","title":{"rendered":"I think Apple should take this radical approach to the new Siri"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"Apple<\/p>\n

Apple has been roundly criticized<\/a> for falling behind in AI, and for its rather disastrous Apple Intelligence<\/a> launch in which it was forced to admit<\/a> it had promised things it couldn\u2019t deliver<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second criticism is valid, the first only partly so. But a new report suggests that Apple\u2019s path to delivering on its AI promises may be a radical one: abandoning work on its own model<\/a>. I do now think that\u2019s absolutely the right thing to do \u2026 <\/p>\n

Initially giving Apple a pass<\/p>\n

I started out by giving Apple a pass on its AI progress for two reasons. First, the company has very rarely aimed to be first to market, instead aiming to be best. A couple of years ago, I argued that some high-profile disasters with early versions of LLMs demonstrated the wisdom of Apple taking a cautious approach<\/a> in this case.<\/p>\n

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Bing told one user they were \u201cwrong, confused, and rude<\/a>\u201d about what year it was, and demanded an apology. In another chat<\/a>, it\u00a0offered a Nazi salute phrase as a suggested response. Kevin Roose of the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0published\u00a0an incredible chat session<\/a>\u00a0he had with Bing, in which the chatbot declared that they were in love.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0The Telegraph\u00a0asked Bing to translate some text, the chatbot\u00a0demanded to be paid for the work<\/a>, and supplied a (fictitious) PayPal address for the payment. When computer scientist\u00a0Marvin von Hagen<\/a>\u00a0told Bing that he might have the hacking skills to shutdown the chatbot, and asked a follow-up question, Bing\u00a0said its own survival was more important than that of a human which might threaten it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I argued that Apple using speech as the primary interface for AI made it particularly important<\/a> for the company to be careful.<\/p>\n

Second, Apple\u2019s approach to privacy. LLMs rely on huge amounts of human data for their training, and Apple\u2019s determination to ensure that user data is not used for training makes the task particularly challenging. Contrast that with \u2026 certain other companies<\/a>, and the difference is very stark.<\/p>\n

But we cannot wait indefinitely<\/p>\n

Two years later, however, with Apple users still waiting, I reached the point of deciding that enough was enough<\/a>. If the company couldn\u2019t give us a smarter Siri anytime soon, it was time for it to allow its customers to vote with their feet and choose to replace Siri with the chatbot of their choice. I argued this would benefit both Apple and its customers.<\/p>\n

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First, it would relieve it of the time pressure it\u2019s currently under. Since users would be free to choose an alternative for now, it can really take its time with Siri, and launch the service it really wants, once the company is completely happy with its performance.<\/p>\n

Second, Apple could boost its own Siri development efforts by gathering a\u00a0vast\u00a0amount of data about the chatbot requests iPhone users make of their third-party services. This would be massively valuable in steering the company\u2019s own decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, Apple should ask user permission for this, but I\u2019d certainly be happy to grant that, and I suspect most other iPhone users would too. Helping Apple develop the best possible Siri is in all our interests.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After another six months had gone by with almost nothing in the way of visible progress, I said it was getting harder and harder to believe<\/a> that Apple can actually deliver.<\/p>\n

Apple may take a new path<\/p>\n

A recent report suggested that Apple may now be concluding that developing its own model simply doesn\u2019t make sense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Some Apple leaders hold the view that large language models will become commodities in the years to come and that spending a fortune now on its own models doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This had previously been hinted at with a report that Apple would use Google\u2019s Gemini<\/a> as the backend for many Siri queries.<\/p>\n

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The custom Gemini model will run on Apple\u2019s Private Cloud Compute servers, to help fulfil user requests. Apple has promised that the new Siri will be able to answer personal questions like \u2018find the book recommendation from Mom\u2019 by hunting through data on your device and generating the appropriate response on-the-fly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I now think this would be best<\/p>\n

After previously hoping that Apple simply needed a bit more time, I have now concluded that this approach would offer the best of all possible worlds.<\/p>\n

Currently, I have Siri set to automatically fall back to ChatGPT when it can\u2019t help. I do this with Apple\u2019s assurance that my queries will not be used by OpenAI for training purposes in the way they would be if I used the app directly.<\/p>\n

The Gemini report likewise says that, although Google\u2019s model will be used, running it on Apple\u2019s PCC servers means that user privacy would be fully protected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With this approach, we get the best of what the leading AI companies can offer, coupled to Apple\u2019s ironclad privacy guarantees. Given that privacy not performance is Apple\u2019s USP when it comes to artificial intelligence, I can see no great value in Apple persisting in trying to develop its own models given the very slow rate of progress.<\/p>\n

My own view now, then, is that Apple should go full steam ahead on using the best available AI models running on its own PCC servers with its own privacy guarantees.<\/p>\n

Do you agree? Please share your thoughts in the comments.<\/p>\n

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