Apple working to change the ‘Hey Siri’ trigger to only ‘Siri’ might seem trivial. However, the effort to swap the ‘Hey Siri’ assistance command to ‘Siri’ is a project to simplify the process to summon Siri, reports Gurman.
Apple’s initiative to drop the ‘Hey’ trigger command in the phrase seems less significant – but – the amount of AI training it needs is insane, tailored to the underlying engineering work.
The company has been working, developing, finessing, and tweaking the ‘said change’ for some good past months and we might see the switch next year or the year after.
As noted by Gurman, the company has been testing the single, and simplified wake word with employees and within themselves and collecting the necessary training data.
The complexity involves getting the dialects and multiple accents correct for Siri to understand and interpret the singular wake word ‘Siri’. The current, two-word trigger phrase ‘Hey Siri’ potentially increases the chance of the AI voice assistant picking up on the command.
Apple is reportedly advancing tointegrate its AI voice assistant deeper into third-party apps and services and improve its ability to understand users and take the correct course of action, as reported by Mark Gurman.
Swapping to just ‘Siri’ will Apple’s voice assistant to keep up with Amazon’s Alexa as it already lets you activate using just “Alexa” instead of “Hey Alexa”. Also, it would put Siri one step ahead of Google Assistant, which asks you to say the phrase “Ok Google” or “Hey Google”.
While Siri is remarkably good at picking up on signals, the system can still often misunderstand users or take the wrong course of action on a request.
However, the company has recently made a few other tweaks to Siri, including redesigning the interface on the Apple TV as part of tvOS 16.1. Siri has also been upgraded with some small tweaks like the addition of a new voice recording by a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a new Siri activation sound, as reported by Verge.
Talking about Microsoft, the company also made the shift from “Hey Cortana” to only “Cortana” on smart speakers until shortly after it shut down its voice assistant feature.
I believe that…
“Hey, Siri” is not at all annoying – at least if you summon it once. What I would really want out of Siri is a brief few seconds after a command is completed to be able to just spout off another command without having to trigger it again It’s somewhat annoying to say “Hey Siri” 3 or 4 times to get a few smart home things done.
And, if Apple makes it happen along with the removal of “Hey”, then we can accidentally trigger Siri more regularly. We think we’ll love it more!
However, only removing the current “Hey” from “Hey Siri” doesn’t come as a breakthrough if it isn’t more consistent and if I have to ask Siri multiple times to change the volume or skip a track.
Do you agree with me?
