Revamped, upgraded Siri touted for a big iOS 18 unveiling at WWDC in June

The last few weeks have been full to the brim with rumors of impending AI improvements coming to the iPhone and other Apple platforms. Those improvements have so far revolved around new features coming to existing apps like Messages, Notes, and others. But now a New York Times report hints at a big improvement coming to one aspect of the iPhone that really does need it.

Siri has been around since 2011 but it has proven to be lacking in a variety of ways, especially when compared with more modern alternatives like ChatGPT from Open AI and Google's Gemini generative AI. Apple is rumored to be nearing a deal with the former to bring its technology to the iPhone, and now the New York Times claims that the technology will help give Siri a big shot in the arm.

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The report claims that Apple has been aiming for Siri improvements since executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The executives found that while Siri often struggled to respond to requests properly, and even when it did it could only do it to one request at a time, ChatGPT and similar tools are completely different beasts. Generative AI tools can understand subsequent requests and use the context of the existing conversation when responding.

As a result of that discovery, Apple is now aiming at making big improvements to Siri and unnamed sources have told the New York Times that we should look to WWDC for some big upgrades. The new Siri improvements will just be part of Apple's newfound focus on AI capabilities, however.

If Apple does, as we strongly expect, choose to announce the new AI features at WWDC next month we can then expect the iOS 18 update to be made available to developers in beta form. After that, it's likely to be a number of months before we expect the update to be released to the public. Apple tends to make these new updates available in September, shortly before it makes the new iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, Apple Watch X, and a refreshed Apple Watch Ultra 2 available to the public.

Alongside iOS 18 we also expect Apple to announce new software updates for the iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro. Before then, Apple's new M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air will of course go on sale on May 15 having been announced earlier this week.