Apple's doubling down on AI in Siri and messages.

Let's break down what's happening with Apple and AI. With its latest beta release iOS 17.4 update, we can see a glimpse of what's on the horizon for iOS 18. Apple's taking steps to revamp Siri and Messages with some testing against ChatGPT too.

What's going on here?

Apple is expected to introduce advanced AI features in iOS 18, as suggested by iOS 17.4 beta code.

What does this mean?

The code in this release shows a new feature called SiriSummarization to improve how Siri understands and summarizes information, potentially making it more useful in daily tasks and communication. ChatGPT is lending a hand for now, but Apple is also testing its own AI models, such as "Ajax," to power these improvements.

Bloomberg also reported potential AI integration in Messages for auto-responses and sentence completion, driven by Craig Federighi's software team.

Why should I care?

In the iOS 17.4 beta, there's clear evidence that Apple is experimenting with enhancing Siri's capabilities, but it’s unlikely that Apple will use external models. This is more like testing their internal models vs ChatGPT (and Flan-T5 too).

Given Siri's (and honestly, most voice assistants’) lacklustre performance up until now, this move by Apple could be a game-changer. We all want assistants that can actually understand context and provide relevant, useful interactions. Let's see if Apple can take the lead in making assistants truly assistive.