Tag Archives: siri

Apple needs to solve its overheating problem before it can introduce Siri AI

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You may read the title of this article and think to yourself, “wait a second, isn’t Siri already an AI?” Well, yes and no. Back in the early 2010s, “AI” was a popular buzzword among big tech companies, who described their virtual assistant services as AI companions – which was technically true, due to their reliance on natural language processing to interpret voice commands and output rote responses.

When tech corps talk about AI today, they’re primarily referring to chatbots using generative AI models like ChatGPT, which are vastly more advanced – and costly to operate. These have far more agency to “guess” correct information – even if you only provide limited input – thanks to sweeping advancements in machine learning. If you’re used to talking to Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Assistant, you probably know there’s only so much these assistants can do… without a reasonable amount of extra programming to make them speak to far more advanced AI software like ChatGPT.

Throughout 2023, generative AI has dominated the entire conversation about artificial intelligence, and for that reason, a large chunk of software has been retrofitted to include some form of generative AI to help users navigate faster. Now, according to a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman, Apple is racing to implement a similar model into Siri in iOS devices as soon as next year – with the release of iOS 18. That’s exciting on paper, if not for the fact it feels like Apple is putting the cart before the horse; chasing flashy new features while letting its most loyal users deal with quality control issues.

iPhone 15 Pro models are still overheating

You can’t really escape the fact that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max overheating issue happened. Period. More importantly, it’s still happening. The iOS 17.1 update that Apple promised would fix the overheating issue – which caused everything from periods of system instability to OLED burn-in – isn’t even fully released yet, as of the writing of this article. What it does include, however, is a large number of fixes that should have launched with the $999+ iPhone 15 Pro and $1,199+ iPhone 15 Pro Max to begin with, nearly one month ago.

On one hand, this whole situation feels like it was caused by a simple quality control error. The fact it’s evidently simple enough to fix over a couple of smaller software updates and one larger update, one month on, still raises questions on an organizational level. But in any case, adding a generative AI layer on the OS level is likely to make any existing issues worse, for reasons I’ll explain later on.

Overheating seems to be a software issue

As I previously mentioned, the overheating issue in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max seems like it comes from an interaction between iOS 17 and the iPhone 15 Pro itself. It’s easy to speculate what’s going on under the hood without delving deeper into the inner workings of the iPhone 15 Pro/Max or the massive interlocking systems of code powering it.

But again, purely from a software standpoint, Apple won’t easily escape the potential quality control issues that could come up by making its existing code exponentially more complex and demanding with advanced AI features. That follows the logic of why Apple is introducing more fixes than features with iOS 17.1 – it sorely needs to, in order to satisfy the disappointed iPhone 15 Pro owners – but the fact it’s apparently dropping “$1 billion per year” on integrating AI at this exact moment feels like an example of over-eagerness to catch up with a trend it doesn’t already have its thumb on.

Running generative AI models locally is system-intensive

A sizeable number of programs that use generative AI, do so by outsourcing their AI processing to external providers (like ChatGPT) via API calls, or just by telling a less intelligent program to manually send a command to an AI chatbot through a web interface. This is because the amount of computational power it takes to run an LLM locally is rather high. Some AI processes can work well locally, even on phones, thanks to specialized chips that are optimized for those purposes. For instance, the Google Pixel 8 is inherently built to run a wide number of AI-powered services, like Zoom Enhance, without using any external API.

On an indirectly related note, I can use my NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti to double the framerates in video games with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, both of which use an AI model to (locally) enhance the image of my games before they reach my display. That’s the sort of thing you can generally do with specialized chips, without pushing your CPU or other internals beyond their limitations.

Running an LLM locally, which the current iPhone generation isn’t equipped to do, is a whole different thing. And yet, it’s the only conceivable improvement to Siri that would make sense when Apple talks about “upgrading” Siri with AI features. As an Apple user: yes, I want the functionality of generative AI in Siri, but I’d like to not have to worry about it tanking my system performance or rely on an always-on internet connection to work.

Siri likely won’t win the generative AI race

An LLM-based Siri would be behind the times, even if it came out in 2024 as a local function within the next generation of iPhones. That’s already highly unlikely for the reasons I described above. And since we already have so many powerful web-based LLM chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Bing, it’s not like the addition of a Siri-based AI chatbot would provide a ton of additional value – except to diehard Apple users who wouldn’t ever dip outside of Apple’s ecosystem anyhow.

At this point in the race, it feels like Apple is chasing the hype train rather than defining it. Once again, it’s the cart placed before the horse.

Improved Siri AI is still coming, inevitably

Everyone is adding some form of generative AI bot to their software, so why not also do the same thing to iOS 18? It would add sorely-needed functionality to Siri, making it a true AI assistant with the ability to – for instance – fully manage an iPhone or iPad’s calendar. It could also help iPhone users learn how to use the system more efficiently, and take care of other menial tasks. If Apple is putting as much effort and capital into the project as is evident by the Bloomberg report, it’s definitely coming at some point.

Now, with all that said and done, I’m not knocking a hypothetical generative AI-based Siri upgrade – if we were talking solely about utility. If it can work well, it will be a greatly-welcomed addition to the iOS 18 feature set. However, it’s still questionable about how well it will work. For now, I’ll be more impressed when Apple fixes the iPhone 15 Pro’s overheating issues.

The post Apple needs to solve its overheating problem before it can introduce Siri AI first appeared on Yanko Design.

Integrate ChatGPT into Siri to make your Apple voice assistant 100x smarter

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We’ve all been there: you ask Siri a question, and it responds with the ever-frustrating “Sorry I didn’t understand that”. It could be an accent or dialect problem, the fact that Siri isn’t trained on the vast volume of data that Google’s AI is trained on, or just that Apple absolutely dropped the ball on Siri. Apple launched the voice AI as an app almost 13 years ago, although Siri today still feels noticeably dumb and unhelpful even after more than a decade. Google’s voice AI seems to overwhelmingly be the most popular choice nowadays, although there’s a new kid on the block that’s absolutely eating Google’s lunch, at least in the search department.

Unveiled less than a year ago, ChatGPT from OpenAI took the world by storm for its incredible natural language processing capabilities, hitting a million users in just 5 days, and 100 million users in just two months (that’s faster than the growth seen by social media giants like Facebook, Google, and even Snapchat). ChatGPT’s intelligent and human-like responses make it the perfect AI chatbot, especially given that it really understands natural sentences much better than most other AI tools, and it’s most likely to respond with a helpful answer than an apology. Developer Mate Marschalko saw this as a brilliant opportunity to integrate ChatGPT’s intelligence with Siri, turning it into a much more helpful voice AI. With a little bit of hackery (which just took him about an hour), Marschalko combined Siri’s voice features with ChatGPT’s NLP intelligence using Apple’s Shortcuts feature. The result? A much better Voice AI that fetches better search results, offers more meaningful conversations, and even lets you control your smart home in a much more ‘human-friendly’ way… almost rivaling Tony Stark’s JARVIS in terms of usability. The best part? You can do it too!

Marschalko lists out his entire procedure in a Medium blog post that I definitely recommend checking out if you want to build your own ‘SiriGPT’ too, with an approach that required absolutely no coding experience. “I asked GPT-3 to pretend to be the smart brain of my house, carefully explained what it can access around the house and how to respond to my requests,” he said. “I explained all this in plain English with no programme code involved.”

The video above demonstrates exactly how Marschalko’s ‘SiriGPT’ works. His home is filled with dozens of lights, thermostats, underfloor heating, ventilation unit, cameras, and a lot more, making it the perfect testing ground for possibly every use case. Marschalko starts by splitting up his tasks into four distinct request types. The four request types are labeled Command, Query, Answer, and Clarify, and each request type has its own process that GPT-3 follows to determine what needs to be done.

Marschalko’s AI is significantly better at processing indirectly worded commands.

Where the magic really unfolds is in how even indirect requests from Marschalko are understood and translated into meaningful actions by the assistant. While Siri and other AI assistants only respond to direct requests like “turn the light on”, or “open the garage door”, GPT3 allows for more nuanced conversations. In one example, Marschalko says “Notice that I’m recording this video in the dark, in the office. Can you do something about that,” and the assistant promptly turns on the light while responding with an AI-generated response instead of a template reply. In another example, he says “my wife is on the way driving home, and will be here in 15 minutes. Switch lights on for her outside just before she parks up”, to which the assistant responds with “The lights should be turned on by the time your guest arrives!”, demonstrating two powerful things… A. The ability to grasp concepts as complex as ‘wanting to switch a specific light on after a delay of a couple of minutes’, and B. Responding in a natural manner that conveys that they understood exactly what you wanted to be done.

Marschalko hooked all this into a shortcut called Okay Smart Home, and to power it, all he had to do was activate Siri and say the name of the shortcut (in this case “Okay Smart Home”) and then begin talking to his assistant. The four request types basically allowed Marschalko to cover all kinds of scenarios, from controlling smart home appliances with the Command request to asking the status of an appliance (like the temperature of a room or the oven) with the Query request. The Answer request covers more chat-centric queries like asking the AI for recommendations, suggestions, or general information from across the web, and the final Clarify request would allow the AI to ask you to repeat or rephrase your question if it was unable to detect any of the three previous request types.

Although this GPT-powered assistant absolutely runs circles around the visibly dumber Siri, it doesn’t come for free. You have to set up an OpenAI account and buy tokens to access its API. “Using the API will cost around $0.014 per request, so you could perform over 70 requests for $1,” Marschalko says. “Bear in mind that this is considered expensive because our request is very long, so with shorter ones you will pay proportionally less.”

The entire process is listed in this Medium blog post if you want to learn how to build out your own assistant with its distinct features. If you’ve got an OpenAI account and want to use the AI that Marschalko built in the video above, the Okay Smart Home shortcut is available to download and use with your own API keys.

The post Integrate ChatGPT into Siri to make your Apple voice assistant 100x smarter first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple’s April 20th event revealed by Siri and our favorite conceptual designs we’d love to see!

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While the entire world hunts for the barest hint of an Apple leak, the source of this news is from the horse’s mouth, or the horse’s designed personal assistant – Siri! You read that right. I can easily imagine a tech reporter, after a long day of searching for the newest tech hits, decides to ask their personal assistant for some help – Hey Siri! “When is the next Apple Event?”, you actually get a reply saying “The special event is on Tuesday, April 20, at Apple Park in Cupertino, CA. You can get all the details on Apple.com.” This might be one of those rare moments when Siri’s reply managed to shock and awe us.

Now, Siri’s resourcefulness stops about here. As MacRumors first reported, Siri is providing information in some cases only, while most refer the user to Apple’s website for information on events. Rumors although have been abounding about the launch of a new 12.9-inch iPad Pro that boasts of a Mini LED screen and also the launch of long-speculated AirTags. While we patiently wait, here are some stellar Apple-inspired concept designs that take cues from their patents to designer’s innovation to satisfy our innate Apple-related wishful thinking – that maybe the next design they share proves to be the pivotal change our saturated tech space truly needs.

Apple patent reveals a new type of Pencil with replaceable nibs for different creative applications. Watch out, Wacom and Adobe! In a new patent granted to Apple by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the company is reportedly looking at a next-generation Apple Pencil with swappable nib modules. While the patent doesn’t exclusively outline what these nibs would look like or be used for, it focuses more on the underlying technology, which would allow nibs to connect to the pencil handle via a special lightning-style connector. The Apple Pencil is arguably the iPad Pro‘s secret sauce. Along with the Pencil, the iPad Pro becomes the ultimate creator’s setup (for both 2D as well as 3D creation). It would therefore make sense to explore how the Pencil could further become a ‘power-user tool, allowing creators to unlock new potentials. Yanko Design has imagined what these new nibs could look like, with explorations for more niche 2D uses. The interchangeable nibs include a fine-tip nib, a chisel nib, and a flexible brush-pen nib. Other nib styles could unlock 3D modeling features like being able to sculpt on the iPad. “The filing suggests the nib could contain several different sensors for varying purposes. The component list includes tactile sensors, contact sensors, capacitive and touch sensors, a camera, a piezoelectric sensor, a pressure sensor, or a photodiode”, reports Apple Insider.





The iPhone Fold concept designed by Svyatoslav Alexandrov (for the YouTube channel ConceptsiPhone) comes in the familiar Galaxy Fold format, with a primary 6.3-inch screen on the outside, and a larger, 8-inch folding screen on the inside. It ditches FaceID for the reliable TouchID, and turns the entire primary display into a fingerprint sensor – so you can unlock your phone simply by swiping up. The lack of FaceID means a significantly smaller notch with just one front-facing camera for selfies. The back, however, comes with the iPhone 12 Pro’s entire camera setup, featuring wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses, along with a flash and a LiDAR scanner. Open the iPhone up and it transforms into a squarish iPad Mini that’s designed to be perfectly portable.

The iPhone Q by Johan Gustafsson (named after the fact that it comes with a dedicated QWERTY keyboard) presents a bold ‘new’ vision for the iPhone. I use the word ‘new’ in air-quotes because while adding a dedicated tactile keyboard to a phone isn’t new, it’s new for the iPhone, and more importantly, it presents a new format as smartphone companies desperately try to make their phones look less blockish and more gimmicky. In a world of folding phones with creased displays, pathetic battery lives, and clunky bodies, the iPhone Q feels like that perfect premium, enterprise-grade smartphone to pair with the iPad Pro or the MacBook Pro. The phone comes sans a notch but makes up for the lack of a front-facing camera with a complete tactile keyboard right underneath the screen.

A better way to describe PS Design’s iPhone 13 concept is to compare the rear display to Apple’s closest product – the Apple Watch. The 3-inch always-on rear display practically mirrors the watch’s capabilities, allowing you to see the time, notifications, and a wide variety of other data on it. The display on the rear uses Apple’s low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) technology to provide its always-on feature, and the fact that it sits right beside the main camera setup (and that it’s larger than the Mi 11 Ultra’s display), means the front of the phone can ditch the notch entirely, creating a beautifully bezel-less iPhone that leaves little to be desired.

Presenting, the ‘Cheesegrater’ Case for the iPhone 12 Pro as visualized by Sarang Sheth. Made from a TPE bumper and a machined aluminum backplate, the case puts the familiar cheesegrater texture on the back of the iPhone to help it cool more efficiently (well at least in theory). In theory, it’s also perfectly suited to mince cloves of garlic or grate some Parmigiano Reggiano. Now that we have a (sort of) clear vision of what the cheesegrater texture would look like on an iPhone, let’s objectively and subjectively judge this. For starters, it just looks like a really bad idea. Objectively speaking, a textured metal body would most certainly trap dirt, dust, pieces of lint, aside from also preventing the phone from wirelessly charging. The current textured metal plate is 1mm thick, and for any sort of texture, you’d need 3D depth which adds unnecessary thickness to the phone – something Apple probably won’t want to do.

The colored iMacs are really a hat-tip to the candy-colored iMac G3 series from back in 2008. According to Jon Prosser, who collaborated with Concept Creator over the following images, the 2021 iMacs are likely to come in 5 colors – black, white, green, blue, and rose gold… just like the 2020 iPad Air. The colors will be much more subtle than the iMac G3’s, but they provide an interesting dynamic to the aluminum-clad all-in-one computers. When viewed from the front, the new iMacs tend to resemble the iPad too, with the bezel treatment. Unlike previous iMacs that came with a massive chin under the screen that sported the Apple logo, the new iMacs will have much more uniform bezels. It isn’t really apparent if they’ll also come with FaceID — although given they’ll be used indoors, in settings where masks aren’t really required!

The iPhone Flip (created by Technizo Concept in collaboration with LetsGoDigital) shares the same nomenclature and folding format as the Galaxy Z Flip from Samsung, albeit with a few key differences. The device measures about the same size as your current iPhone 12 Pro Max, but it sports a folding line across its ‘waist’, which allows the iPhone to fold in half like a clamshell phone from the 90s. This folding structure allows the smartphone to become more compact and easier to carry (although the resulting folded form would be twice the thickness of the phone), while also giving you the option to use the iPhone as a miniature laptop by folding it halfway in an ‘L’ shape.

Love it, hate it, but for sure, you cannot ignore Apple. As these renders show, there are tons of innovation we look forward to from the powerhouse that is Apple.

This Microsoft self-driving car concept takes aim at the ambitious Apple Project Titan

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People have been arguing over ‘Windows vs Macintosh’ for decades, but the extent of that ideological battle has only been as far as computers are concerned. With the Microsoft Surface car concept, that feud extends into the world of transportation too!

Meet the Microsoft Surface Car, an automobile that beautifully channels the sleek aesthetic of Microsoft’s Surface laptops into its automotive design. Visualized by Yang Gu-rum, an automotive designer based out of Korea, the Surface car concept shows how design details from tech products can seamlessly be carried forward into car-design. The Surface Car comes with a relatively boxy yet sleek design, dominated by flat surfaces and straight lines. Channeling the same visual language of the Surface tablets and laptops, the car sports a satin-finish silver body, with black accents and tinted glass. The absence of a radiator grill indicates that the concept is powered by an electrical drivetrain, and it wouldn’t be too risky to assume that the car also has some form of a self-driving AI built in. There are no renders of what the interiors of the car looks like, but judging from its design, it seats two people. The vehicle sports camera-based rear-view mirrors, and remarkably streamlined LED strips on the front and the back, serving as headlights and taillights… not to mention that Microsoft logo that shows up on the top right corner of the front of the car, as well as on both doors.

Although there isn’t any indication that Microsoft is working on an in-house production car (and that this car over here is just a fan-made design exercise), the Surface Car does definitely look fascinating. Not to mention the fact that it would definitely make the Apple vs Microsoft rivalry a whole lot more interesting too! I just hope the car doesn’t come bundled with Cortana…

Designer: Yang Gu-Rum

iOS 14.3 is out with support for Fitness+, AirPods Max and more

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Apple has rolled out iOS 14.3 with support for Fitness+, AirPods Max, App Store privacy labels and much more. The Apple Watch-powered Fitness+ service is now live in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the US. It costs $10/mon...

Apple unveils AirPods Max, its first over-ear noise-cancelling headphones

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After months of rumors, we finally have confirmation. Apple officially (and quietly) announced its first over-ear headphones today. The AirPods Max offer active noise cancellation (ANC), easy access to Siri and all the current elements of Apple desig...

Apple’s HomePod mini won’t leave marks on your fancy wood furniture

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Between its diminutive size and more affordable price tag, Apple’s new HomePod mini has a lot going for it over its $300 predecessor. But its greatest strength might be what it won’t do to your expensive furniture. That is, it won’t leave unsightly w...