Why Apple’s Future Could Depend on Siri

We all know Siri as a virtual assistant with voice support that lives inside you iPhone. But in the future, Siri could be much more than just a hands-free way to manage your Apple devices. It could develop into the connective tissue between future Apple products, from smart glasses to home displayswhich potentially determines whether Apple can make another hit as meaningful as the iPhone.

Voice-controlled gadgets are nothing new; Siri has been available on the iPhone for 13 years, and both Amazon and Google have managed to make barking commands at home appliances a practical shortcut rather than a futuristic (and maybe a little silly) concept.

However, if the last two years have proved anything, it is this generative AI — or AI that can create content and provide conversational responses based on training data — is pushing virtual assistants into their next era. Now that voice assistants are getting better at reasoning beyond voice, image, and text, they can evolve into conversational interfaces rather than just question-and-answer bots.

So what does this mean for Siri? There is a belief that as generative AI advances, the interfaces in the phones, laptops and tablets we use every day will become more voice-based and less touch-oriented, potentially leading to entirely new types of devices. That means Siri could become a key point of contact across Apple products moving forward, making Siri’s growth all the more important. It’s not just about keeping up OpenAI a Google; Siri’s future growth could have a bigger impact than ever on how future Apple products are received.

Read more: After using Apple Intelligence for a few weeks, this one feature stands out

Siri could be at the center of Apple’s upcoming devices

Siri is a big part of it Apple Intelligence, Apple is trying to infuse its iPhones, iPads and Macs with more AI features. For example, Siri will get better at using the personal context stored on your phone to answer questions that are highly individualized, such as being able to act on the content on your phone’s screen (similar to Gemini Google Assistant you can already do on Android). Siri also has new insights into Apple products, which means you can ask her for tech support.

But new AI features for phonesincluding Apple Intelligence and other similar Android-based services, do not yet feel any monumental difference or significance. For the iPhone, I think Siri could be the key to change. I think the biggest promise for AI on our phones is to have an assistant that can better understand all the data, photos, videos, apps and notifications stored on our devices to give us relevant information as we need it. While only Apple knows what’s in store for the future of Apple Intelligence, the company’s current approach suggests Siri could be heading in that direction.

But Apple Intelligence is just the beginning. Apple is reportedly working on a class of new devices that will likely rely more heavily on voice input, such as smart glasses and a wall-mounted smart home display. Bloomberg. Apple is reportedly evaluating the smart glasses category in a bid to potentially compete with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which can answer questions based on what the user is looking at.

If Apple were to release a similar alternative, it’s hard to imagine Siri not playing a huge role in the device’s functionality. The quality of Siri’s responses would undoubtedly have a big impact on how useful Apple’s smart glasses would be.

Then there’s another area Apple is said to be exploring: Smart home devices. The company is reportedly developing a wall-mounted display powered by Siri and Apple Intelligence that would be used to manage home devices, control apps and make FaceTime calls. Bloomberg. While the device could run on software that resembles a combination of iPhone standby and the Apple Watch’s WatchOS interface, it will primarily be for voice interactions, the report said. This alone suggests that Siri will have a major role in the device.

Read more: Why Google’s new VP of Android says ‘People don’t want to hear about AI’

Why would these new products be so important?

The success of these new products is critical for several reasons. First, all eyes are on Apple’s AI ambitions as OpenAI and Google take the spotlight in the AI ​​race. And second, Apple’s wearables and digital services divisions have been critical in proving the company has new areas for growth that aren’t entirely dependent on the iPhone, helping feed Wall Street when smartphone sales are on the upswing.

New facilities like the ones Bloomberg says are in the works could go a long way toward developing both of these areas. For example, smart glasses could be considered an evolution AirPods in a sense, while a smart home display could support digital services such as Apple Music.

It also wouldn’t be the first time Apple has developed a new gadget with Siri at the center. That triggered it the first HomePod smart speaker in 2018 as a response to offers from Amazon and Google that aim to attract users with superior sound quality than offered by competitors at the time. But the HomePod failed to catch on in the same way, largely because Apple’s smart home platform and Siri were limited by comparison.

With the next wave of products, Apple will have to avoid making the same mistake. That’s why improving and expanding Siri’s capabilities now, before it expands into new product categories, would be a smart move. Bloomberg states that Apple is doing just that; the company is reportedly working on a more conversational version of Siri that can handle two-way verbal exchanges.

For Apple, the bar is particularly high. It is not enough for products like Apple Intelligence, smart glasses or a smart home display to work well. It’s the Apple ecosystem and the way hardware and software work together that makes an Apple product what it is, a point that Apple often acknowledges and is proud of. If we are indeed moving towards a world where virtual assistants don’t help you with the operating system, but to become operating system, then Siri becomes primary and not supplementary.