Denon added Siri support to some of its smart speakers and never thought to tell anyone

Siri might not be the best digital assistant in the world, but it's definitely work knowing that you can at least use it. Siri is available on iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and HomePods and it's also available on a few third-party smart home devices as well. Now, it's also available on a select number of Denon smart speakers. Not that you likely know that, after the audio company apparently launched the feature months ago and didn't tell anyone.

Seemingly ashamed of the partnership that brings Apple's ailing digital assistant to its speakers, Denon started to roll the new feature out back in December, HoemKit News reports. Getting access to Siri is achieved by updating the speaker's software via the HEOS app. Once updated, enabling Siri on the speaker is pretty simple we're told, but notably, you'll need to have a Siri-enabled speaker to hand as well. Why? That's the interesting part.

2

As HomeKit News notes, these speakers don't actually have Siri themselves but rather act as outputs for Siri on other devices. In other words, you'll need a HomePod or HomePod mini on which Siri will handle the heavy lifting before essentially throwing its voice to your Denon speaker - as if it were some kind of ventriloquist speaker.

As for the compatible devices, we're told that the Denon Home series models 150, 250, 350, and Soundbar 550 are all good to go. The speakers also have AirPlay 2 right now, but again you do need to download an update to add Siri support as well. Those speakers that have Amazon's Alexa enabled will also need to have it disabled first - you can only have one digital assistant active at any one time, unfortunately.

Siri might be the runt of the litter right now, but that's expected to change sooner rather than later. Apple is strongly expected to add some new AI-powered features to the iPhone and its other platforms with Siri likely to benefit in some way. The company is reportedly in talks with OpenAI about using its ChatGPT chatbot to potentially improve Siri's capabilities, while Google's Gemini chatbot technology is also thought to be of interest to Apple.

Apple is expected to debut at least some of its new AI features at the WWDC event on June 10, but don't expect to be able to use them yet. The new software updates aren't expected to be made available for use by the public until September time.