- Former Apple engineer John Barkey told the NYT that voice assistant Siri may not be as robust as ChatGPT.
- Burkey said Siri’s ugly design and limited data set make it difficult to update features.
- Generative AI tools like ChatGPT threaten to make voice assistant technology obsolete.
Apple’s voice assistant Siri could never be as powerful as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, says former Apple employee new york times.
Former Apple engineer John Barkey, who was tasked with improving Siri in 2014 and left the company in 2016, said Siri’s clunky design makes it difficult to add new features.
Siri can answer simple questions like “What’s the weather like?” and “Can you play this song?” I can only understand your request. This means engineers need to add new words to the database to extend its functionality.
But Burkey, who calls Siri’s database “one big snowball,” said it could take up to six weeks to add new phrases because the database needs a complete overhaul. It could take about a year to integrate advanced features like his ChatGPT like search. Even an update to Siri’s basic functionality could take weeks due to outdated and complex code, he said.
Apple did not immediately respond to an Insider’s request for comment prior to publication. Barkey did not immediately respond when an insider reached out for further comment.
Burkey’s take on Siri threatens to make voice assistant tech obsolete with its impressive capabilities, as the hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT (currently running on its most advanced language model, GPT-4). It comes from being
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, which recently poured $10 billion into OpenAI, said: financial times This month, we found voice assistants like Siri and Amazon’s Alexa to be “idiots like rocks.”
Siri co-creator Adam Cheyer agrees. He also told his FT that his ChatGPT ability to write essays and develop code makes existing voice assistants look ridiculous. “The previous function was too clunky,” Cheyer said.
I’ve even noticed that Siri users are expressing their frustration on Reddit by asking questions like “Why is Siri so stupid?”
But Siri isn’t the only voice assistant struggling. Insider’s Eugene Kim reported last November that Amazon’s Alexa division was working on life support after losing more than $3 billion in operating losses last year.
“Alexa is a colossal failure of the imagination,” a former Amazon employee previously told Insider. “It was a wasted opportunity.”
Like Amazon, Google also found it difficult to generate significant revenue from its Assistant, a former Amazon and Google manager told the Times. Still, Amazon and Google will continue to build features for their voice assistants, said representatives from both companies.
As for Apple, employees on the Siri team are reportedly testing AI language models, but no product has been announced yet.