Siri Just Became Obsolete (2024)

Wait, it seems it’s being replaced by a “New Siri.”

I remember when it all started (this is one of the few advantages of age). It was the end of 2011. There was excitement about the new wonder from Apple: a voice “personal assistant” called Siri able to call your mom, schedule an appointment, and more, with just your voice! Well, kind of, because at the time, the English-only Siri was unable to pick non-native accents…

We knew there were many limitations in what Siri could understand and do, but the beginnings were just that, the beginnings. We were used to seeing gradual progress in everything technology.

Few remember today, but the iPhone didn’t have cut-and-paste at first! It didn’t have an app store! It was only years later that the iPhone became the iPhone. So for sure, any shortcomings of Siri will be ironed out in the following years, isn’t it?

They weren’t.

The rigidity of Siri, its need for human-predefined answers (didn’t we all try questions like “What is the meaning of life?” to get a funny but obviously human-made answer that was put there just because they knew somebody was going to ask), its inability to follow up a conversation, stick all for the following years.

I mean, many, many years.

Current Siri is similar to the initial Siri.

What happened?

While Siri was aging (in a bad way), we didn’t think much about it. We didn’t use it a lot, anyway; perhaps that’s why we didn’t notice.

But then, all of a sudden, Generative AI (GenAI) happened. And it instantly made Siri obsolete.

GenAI –made popular mainly with ChatGPT– has an entirely different level compared to Siri regarding general language capabilities and, above all, flexibility.

We have seen ChatGPT answering questions written in any way we want, not restricted to a predefined pattern by the designers. ChatGPT felt new, flexible, and liberated from the previous rigidity we didn’t even notice we were suffering from.

GenAI made Siri obsolete even without trying.