by Dan Moren
Siri won’t be your AI girlfriend
This soundbite has been making the rounds this morning, from an interview with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak on the show Mostly Human:
I mean, the way that we have designed Siri, Siri really wants to say ‘Listen, that’s not what I’m here for, right? I’m here to help you. I can help you get things done. I can help you learn about the world.’ But if you try to engage Siri as a romantic partner, Siri’s not up for that. Siri’s 100 percent not into that.
This jibes with what I heard from my conversations with Apple this week, namely that Siri is designed to act as your helpful personal assistant. It’s further borne out by the poking around that folks like Federico Viticci have done in what they can find of Siri’s prompts.
This isn’t to say that Siri doesn’t still occasionally dip into the kind of AI speak that we’ve grown accustomed to from chatbots; I’ve definitely seen it. But I’ve also noticed, anecdotally, that Siri is quick to acknowledge mistakes and, crucially, ask for more followup information rather than doubling down. If nothing else, that feels like a key difference that I want to see from my AI interactions.