A smarter Siri with deep voice-based controls is on the horizon

Digital Trends

10 hours ago

At WWDC 2024, Apple announced a next-gen Siri experience that was able to take action across different apps and gain contextual awareness, thanks to a system called app intents. Apple later showcased those capabilities in an iPhone 16 ad, as well.
As of 2025, those groundbreaking Siri tricks are yet to appear on iPhones. Earlier this year, shareholders sued Apple over misleading ads that overstated the AI chops, and the company even had to pull an ad highlighting those Siri upgrades.
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It seems a redemption event for Siri is not too far away in the future. According to Bloomberg, Apple's digital assistant will get a next-gen App Intents overhaul early next year.
'With nothing but your voice, you'll be able to tell Siri to find a specific photo, edit it and send it off. Or comment on an Instagram post. Or scroll a shopping app and add something to your cart. Or log in to a service without touching the screen,' says the report.
Futuristic, with a pinch of caution
At the moment, Apple is taking a cautious approach and reportedly won't roll out all the voice-based capabilities in one go. Instead, the company is currently testing cross-app Siri interaction with only its own pre-installed applications and a select bunch of third-party services, such as Amazon, Uber, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
Apple has already had a bitter taste of the AI fumble. The notification summarization system, which rolled out with Apple Intelligence last year, made such serious errors that the BBC called out the company and Apple had to disable the feature for months. With the upcoming Siri refresh, Apple is taking a safer route.
It definitely sounds convenient that Siri will be able to interact and take actions within apps using just voice commands. To avoid another disaster, however, Apple would 'sharply' limit Siri interactions in sensitive apps such as mobile banking and wallets, or totally keep them out of Siri's reach.
But it seems this is not just a big bet for Siri. Instead, Apple is going to push it as the next big leap for its ecosystem, one where voice interactions take the lead over touch-and-tap inputs. The idea is not too different from Google's Project Mariner, or agentic browsers where AI helps users accomplish tasks in as few steps as possible.
The situation with Apple and its faltering AI efforts is no secret. Even CEO, Tim Cook, admitted that the company was running late in the game. But recently, he also promised that Apple will gain momentum. Siri's aforementioned upgrade sounds like a solid start, and hopefully leads to the 'AI brain transplant' that would put Siri in the same league as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot.