So far, AI devices like the Rabbit R1 and the Humane Ai pin have been just hype without substance. These devices have largely failed to live up to their promise as true AI companions, but even if they don't suffer from ongoing glitches due to a hasty-to-market strategy, they still suffer from a fundamental flaw: Why would I need one when I could Separate AI device? Can basically everything advertised be done with a smartphone?
It's a tough sell, and it makes me skeptical that AI hardware can take off in any meaningful way. I imagine anyone interested in artificial intelligence would be more likely to download the ChatGPT app and interrogate the world around it than spend hundreds of dollars on a standalone device. However, if you have an iPhone, you may soon forget about AI apps entirely.
Siri could be the AI assistant we were promised
Even though Apple is completely late to the game in artificial intelligence, it may be on to something truly successful where Rabbit and Humane failed: Apple is planning to launch AI in iOS 18, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Big changes to Siri in later versions: Previous rumors suggested that Apple was working to make interacting with Siri more natural, and the latest leak suggests the company is giving Siri the ability to control "hundreds" of features in Apple apps: You Say You want the assistant to do something (e.g. crop this photo) and it will do it. If that's true, it's a huge leap compared to using Siri to set an alarm and check the weather.
Gurman said Apple would have to redesign Siri for the feature, integrating the assistant with LLM for all the artificial intelligence processing. He said Apple plans to make Siri a major showcase at WWDC, demonstrating how the new artificial intelligence assistant can open documents, move notes to specific folders, manage emails and create summaries of articles being read. Currently, AI Siri can reportedly only handle one command at a time, but Apple hopes to roll out an update that will let you stack commands, too. In theory, you could eventually ask Siri to perform multiple functions across apps. Apple also plans to launch its own app, so Siri won't be able to interact in this way on Instagram or YouTube — at least not yet.
It'll take a while to be ready: While iOS 18 may be released in the fall, Gurman doesn't think AI Siri will be available until at least next year. But beyond that, we currently know very little about the change. But the idea that you can ask Siri to do anything on your smartphone is interesting: In a message, you can say "Hey Siri, react to David's last message." In Notes, you can say "Hey Siri, invite Sarah and Michael to collaborate on this note." If Apple found a way to make almost every feature in iOS Siri-friendly, it could be a game-changer.
In fact, it could turn Siri (and, to a greater extent, your iPhone) into the kind of artificial intelligence assistant the company is trying to sell to the public. Imagine a future where you can point your iPhone at a subject and ask Siri to tell you more about it. Then, maybe you ask Siri to take a photo of the subject, crop it, and email it to a friend with a summary of what you just learned. Maybe you're browsing a complex article and ask Siri to summarize it for you. In this ideal version of AI Siri, you don't need a Rabbit R1 or a Humane Ai Pin: you just need Apple's latest and greatest iPhone. Siri can not only do everything these artificial intelligence devices say, but also everything else you normally do on your iPhone. A win-win situation.
The iPhone is the other side of the coin, though: These features are so power-hungry that Apple is rumored to be figuring out which features can run on the device and which need to run in the cloud. The more functions Apple outsources to the cloud, the greater the security risks, although rumors suggest the company is working to make cloud-based AI features secure as well. But Apple will likely continue to run the AI-powered Siri feature on devices, which means you'll likely need at least an iPhone 15 Pro to run it.
The truth is, we won't know exactly what AI features Apple is working on until they launch in June. However, if Gurman's sources are to be believed, Apple's delayed AI strategy could work in its favor.
