As Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports, Apple is working on an updated interface for its Siri voice assistant. Namely, the Cupertino company plans to drop the 'Hey' word from the 'Hey Siri' wake phrase that Apple users need to say to activate the voice assistant hands-free and give it a certain command.
This way, the phrase will be shortened to just 'Siri,' and this should significantly simplify the process of launching the assistant.
However, the update will take a while: Gurman expects the change to come into force next year or even in 2024. While this may seem like a small change, the switch is a technical challenge that requires a significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work. The company needs a lot of time to train the AI to correctly recognize requests in different languages, accents, and dialects.
Once these changes go into effect, all users of Apple devices with Siri support will be able to say 'Siri' followed by a command to activate the smart voice assistant.
Apple is also working to more deeply integrate Siri into third-party apps and services and improve its ability to understand users and take the correct course of action.