I’ve been using Apple products for over 30 years – it’s time to kill Siri

Apple has put a lot of effort into improve Siri as a result of the generative revolution of artificial intelligence. In iOS 18.2it understands complex queries more easily, has a deeper set of knowledge (especially about Apple’s own products), and can even transfer to ChatGPT when it cannot help on its own.

I’m a big fan of how Apple handles artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence is a highly intelligent system consisting of on-premises and cloud models that work in tandem to provide a combination of high security and impressive performance, especially for everyday tasks.

The problem for Apple is that it is not enough to compete in a market that includes ChatGPT Advanced VoiceGemini Live, Meta AI Voiceand even startups like Hume. Siri has improved—and there are even more updates on the way with personalized assistance and the ability to voice control your apps—but I still can’t talk to it, and turning on ChatGPT made Siri lazy.

Including the ability to send complex queries to OpenAIThe chatbot was a stroke of genius for Apple and plays on the fact that they are happy to use third-party products when they offer a better service. The problem is that they don’t go far enough.

Siri is outdated and needs a lot of work to bring it up to modern standards. Apple should just invest and replace it with Advanced Voice. Company insiders even admit that this is at least two years behind industry leaders.

The company is large enough to have an agreement with OpenAI to run versions of Advanced Voice on its own hardware and infrastructure, storing them in a secure cloud enclave they developed for Apple Intelligence.

Let’s choose our AI companion

side-by-side images of Siri 2.0 and ChatGPT Voice

(Image credit: Future)

There are already Advanced Voice clones on the market that differ from OpenAI’s offerings, including Microsoft’s own Copilot.

We’ll see more of them as OpenAI opens up its real-time API, giving developers the ability to build their own chatbot niche on their platform.

Voice will be everywhere and expected to be conversational, but Siri is far from that.

I’m not just criticizing Apple; Amazon has the exact same problem with Alexaand rumors suggest Amazon is also looking outside the company for a solution.

If Apple doesn’t want to go the extra mile and completely replace Siri with Advanced Voice or other third-party speech-to-speech AI, it should do what it’s forced to do with browsers and the App Store in Europe – give us a choice.

Create a whole new voice AI marketplace – a section of the App Store similar to the browser section where I can replace Siri with any AI assistant I choose. Schools could even trade it in for an assistant trained in their specific curriculum, or companies could have their own corporate voice on corporate devices.

Apple could even leave Siri as default, but they need to do more than they did, and for me the fastest way to do that is to replace it with Advanced Voice, train it with Apple’s own voices, apply native rails protection, and let me talk to my by telephone.