Khaberni - Apple is expected to unveil an entirely new version of its voice digital assistant "Siri," powered by artificial intelligence, in the coming few months.
More than a year and a half after its reveal, Apple's vision for the completely new Siri has faced many engineering challenges and has not yet reached users' devices. However, this is expected to change soon.
The new version of "Siri" is likely to be ready for a first look in less than six weeks, according to a report by "9to5Mac," a technology news site, viewed by "Al Arabiya Business."
Expected Siri Updates
Apple revealed three major updates for Siri with artificial intelligence features named “Apple Intelligence” at its 2024 developers conference. These updates are:
Personal Context: When speaking to the Siri assistant, it will have contextual information about your device, relieving you from needing to know where to find anything specific.
Screen Awareness: Siri will be able to see your screen when you ask something from it, allowing you to clarify what you need in more detail.
Executing Actions Within Apps: Instead of needing to open an app for each routine task, you will be able to request task completion from Siri.
Initially, these new upgrades for Siri were scheduled to appear in the "iOS 18.4" operating system update. However, Apple faced technical obstacles in Siri's engineering architecture, leading to a delay in release while Siri was redeveloped from scratch using a new architecture based on large language models.
Apple is currently considering using Google's "Gemini" artificial intelligence to run these features, instead of relying on the models existing on the device.
If Gemini is adopted, private cloud computing will be used, meaning that Google will not obtain data from what users ask "Siri."
Artificial Intelligence Search Engine
Apart from Siri features, Apple has a new feature under development: an AI-powered search engine. This smart search engine is expected to be launched next March, coinciding with the release of "iOS 26.4."
Apple seized the opportunity to rebuild the voice assistant to create a new search product internally named "World Knowledge Answers," aiming to compete with programs like "Perplexity" and "ChatGPT."
This feature is also scheduled to launch in March as part of the new version of Siri and may later be added to the Safari browser and the "Spotlight" search tool.
