Ep 794: Apple’s New Siri AI: Productivity Gamechanger or More Apple Intelligence Marketing Fluff?

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life.

Apple just announced its newest Apple Intelligence at its WWDC keynote, and the sentiment so far is mixed. I mean, sure, in overly polished demos, Apple's new Siri AI and improved Apple Intelligence looked great. Siri AI seems more responsive and helpful, where you can actually talk to your phone and it seems to scan across your messages, emails, and more to provide answers grounded in your context. Sounds new and groundbreaking, right? Well, Not exactly, because not only have all of these features been available in dozens of other platforms for years, but it seems we've also heard this AI song and dance from Apple before. That's because we have, because this is exactly what Apple announced in 2024. Yeah, what we heard yesterday from Apple, it's kind of exactly what they said at their Worldwide Developer Conference 2 years ago, at least when it comes to all of these AI features. And well, what happened with that? Apple failed to deliver on what they promised in 2024. They had to pull ads marketing their Apple Intelligence and then had to fork over $250 million for a class action lawsuit they lost for promoting AI features that they absolutely couldn't even begin to deliver on. So will we be getting actually useful AI AI on Apple devices anytime soon after Apple's latest buzzy announcement? Well, we're going to dive into that and a lot more on today's episode of Everyday AI. But here is the big picture. So Apple's new splashy Siri AI. Yeah, Siri has a new name because if it doesn't work before, just slap AI on it. So Apple's new splashy Siri AI and its dedicated Siri app. Yeah, now there's a Siri app. Siri app, uh, and its new Apple Intelligence look really good. But all this does is it looks like the version that most people expected and most people wanted after Apple literally promoted this in 2024 at their June Developer Conference. And Apple's biggest leap though may be in the context-aware capabilities. So that allows Siri to not just understand all of your app's context across your phone. So all of your old text messages, emails, et cetera, but also the ability to understand what's on screen. But the biggest question is, will consumers actually care? Or have they already moved on from this promise of Apple Intelligence? Or have they already found enough of these capabilities in all of the other platforms that have it available, like Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini and ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. So that's what we're going to tackle on today's show and stick with me for the next 25-ish minutes. And here's what you'll learn. You'll learn what's new in Siri AI and Apple Intelligence. You'll know when it's available and the biggest returns you'll likely be getting from using it. And you'll know what's overhyped, what's useful, what's useless, and if Apple will actually deliver this or if they'll end up paying another $250 million lawsuit for failing to deliver. All right, let's get into it. Welcome to Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson and we do this every day. If you're brand new here, this is an unedited, unscripted livestream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you sort through this mess of AI updates we get dumped on every single day. I spend hours experimenting with it all, and I tell you what's real, what's fake, what matters. You take that information to grow your company and career. It starts here, but make sure you go to our website, youreverydayai.com. There we're gonna be highlighting the, uh, highlights from today's show as well as all of the other AI news that's happening around the world that you need to know to grow your company and your career. So let's talk about what's new or maybe not new, uh, with Apple's WWDC. So there was obviously a lot of eyeballs on this thing, both in the tech world and beyond, not just because of what I already mentioned, because Apple had already had to kind of, you know, eat crow for failing over the course of 2 years to not deliver on the initial quote unquote Apple intelligence that it promised back at its WWDC 2024. So not only is there increased scrutiny and increased attention on Apple for literally being probably, I mean, there's been other huge failures around AI, but I think Apple's fumbling of the bag goes well beyond what we've seen from any other company. Even if you look at initial, right, initially Google's Bard, uh, you know, that was kind of catastrophic. What Apple fumbled is is way, way worse and way, uh, has played out over the course of multiple years. But not only all those things and the multiple class action lawsuits against Apple and having to pay nearly a quarter or more than a quarter billion dollars, uh, right, to say, hey, yeah, we lied, we said buy the new iPhone and you'll get all these new features, and we ran commercials and we had to pull the commercials because it wasn't true. Whoops. Not only all those things, but this was Tim Cook's last WWDC. So the Worldwide Developer Conference, if you don't follow these kind of things, this is Apple's one big moment each year where they come out and they say, here's all of the new shiny things that we've been working on. So last year they kind of had to tone down the, you know, all the AI stuff because they were in the middle of all these lawsuits and they got caught with their tail between their legs because they couldn't literally deliver any of it. But with Tim Cook on his way out, and this being his last keynote, there was even more hype, more eyeballs, and more scrutiny. But here is what is coming from Apple. So I'm going to quickly give you some of their highlights that they're talking about, and then I'm going to break it down and tell you what's actually happening. So this is from Apple. They say, introducing Siri AI, truly helpful, truly yours. New Apple intelligence features coming this fall. Siri AI coming in English, later this year. All right, more on that timeline here in a couple of minutes because yeah, there's technically a version that's available now and then there's some stuff coming this fall and then there's some stuff coming this year or later this year. So Apple says, introducing the next generation of Apple Intelligence and Siri, truly helpful AI that's centered around you and your needs, integrated into your apps, grounded in your context, and private at every step, coming later this year. Uh, so here's quickly the breakdown of what's actually available when, or what Apple says is available when, because there's already been a lot of confusion about this. And I don't know, maybe this is part of Apple's playbook, right? Because they know it's going to be a heavy load to deliver what they promised at the keynote and, uh, at all the presentations yesterday. So maybe part of their strategy here is creating a little bit of ambiguity and confusion over the release date because everyone online is already very confused. So already there is some of this Apple intelligence available. So some people were like, no, this is all out today if you're part of the developer beta. Not necessarily true. It's only some of the features, but there already is a developer beta available. So you really just have to click two buttons to sign up for this beta and you get thrown on the waitlist. So yeah, a lot of people are like, oh, anyone in the world can go get this and just, you know, sign up for the developer beta. Not true. All right, I'm, I'm waitlisted. I'm sure most people are waitlisted. I didn't actually see anyone that was available, uh, that actually got this yesterday. So we'll see if they start broadly rolling the developer beta out. Um, I would doubt it, but who knows. Uh, then they say Apple says this fall. So this is the main, uh, new updates that are being rolled out in the operating system. So this is a lot of this is coming to the Mac as well and iPad, but specifically on their iOS. So their, the Apple operating system. So iOS 27 and the Apple Intelligence rollout. So they say most of that is coming this fall. So that's the photo editing, the image playground, all of the AI advancements in their Safari web browser, these passwords fixes, the shortcuts, home camera AI, mail message suggestions, and the Workout Buddy updates. So essentially they're saying a lot of this is not going to come until fall. And then there's the other bucket of AI updates that are saying just later this year, which I would assume might be October, November, maybe later. We'll see. So they say this is the real new Siri AI. All right. So yeah, all the, the crux of this demo that they did yesterday is not going to be available in the developer beta, not going to be available this fall. It will probably be fall under the quote unquote later this year bucket. So that's the real new Siri AI for users, the Siri app, Siri is getting its dedicated app that will use iCloud to sync across your devices. So similar like a ChatGPT app that you can, you know, have a conversation on your, uh, on your phone and then you can pick it up on the web. So Apple says that they'll have this at a dedicated Siri app that will follow you across your Apple devices. You do have to use iCloud to sync it. So they're saying that is part of the later this year, as well as the on-screen awareness, right? Which is the thing that I think most people are like, oh, this could be useful. I can have anything. Up on my screen and ask Siri and it will instantly be able to help me. Well, maybe later this year, we'll see. As well as the new app actions, the camera screen visual intelligence, right? Some of the things that they demoed where it's like, take a photo of this thing and ask Siri what it is, right? Maybe later this year. All right. Then the web answers and likely the Write with Siri. The other thing, this is English for So no clue when this will be rolled out worldwide. No clue when or if the majority of these features will be rolled out in the EU. Apple did call that out, that these are not going to be available at launch for EU users as well as China. So not only is there the first hurdle to clear, which is can Apple actually deliver what they promised again, but then also rolling it out worldwide specifically looks like there's going to be some roadblocks in the EU and China. All right, so a little bit more from Apple's marketing language here. So they say a new Siri AI, an even more capable AI assistant with expanded intelligence to be more helpful every day. You can type or talk naturally with Siri AI to find what you need and get more done. All right, this one I have to call this out. I— do people not look at this stuff before it goes live? This is, this is, this is silly. All right, so, uh, podcast audience, I'm sharing something here on my screen for the livestream audience, but they have a little screenshot shot of an example, right, uh, of the Siri app being able to summarize, uh, you know, your text messages, right? And if you remember back to 2024 when Apple rolled this out, they actually had to take it back because the hallucinations from recapping emails or recapping text messages were so bad, uh, they had to pull the feature completely. But look at this. Okay, look at this example that they did. This is actually on their website. I assume that they're gonna take it down and update it, because they're going to get roasted for this. So, in this example, there's a screenshot of a text message, and then the smarter Siri helping you understand the complexities of the text message. So the actual text message starts out, and you can see, uh, it's this person saying, have you heard of Calathea? I guess that's a plant. Have you heard of Calathea? It's a patterned tropical houseplant, dot, dot, dot, and you don't see the rest. So then helpful Siri AI Says, Aga sent you a message about Calathea. She described it as a patterned tropical houseplant. So again, this Siri AI does absolutely nothing here because it's not like it's, it's taking the context of a, you know, super long text message or a very in-depth technical email and summarizing it. It is literally from the 12 or so words that are on the screen in the text message. It is just saying the exact same thing. So Apple, if you want to showcase that your Siri AI is, is smart, I don't know, maybe have humans look at this because any human with a brain is going to look at this and be like, this is a bad example. This doesn't really show anything. All right. More from the new capabilities. This one, I actually do like this one if it comes out, if it works. So in this example, Apple says next generation Apple Intelligence enhances the apps you use most. So in this example, someone text messages and said, oops, we're out of garlic. Can you please stop and grab some when you're at the store? So in the iMessage kind of interface here, there's the option to automatically add that to Reminders or to add it to Notes. So without having to copy and paste something, you know, it looks like a nice little one-click ability to add something to your Reminders or Notes. Theoretically, this would also work with something like Calendar. All right, then you have the visual intelligence. This is where you can search and take action with visual intelligence now on even more devices. So this will be rolling out also to iPad, Mac, and also Apple Vision Pro. So this is where you can highlight something on your screen, something visually, and then the Siri app will give you some prompted follow-ups so you can explain what it is, or you can type to Siri and ask more. AI moves too fast to follow, but you're expected to keep up. Otherwise, your career or company might lag behind while AI-native competitors leap ahead. But you don't have 10 hours a day to understand it all. That's what I do for you. But after 700+ episodes of Everyday AI, the most common questions I get is: Where do I start? That's why we created the Start Here series, an ongoing podcast series of more than a dozen episodes you can listen to in order. It covers the AI basics for beginners and sharpens the skills of AI champions pushing their companies forward. In the ongoing series, we explain complex trends in simple language that you can turn into action. There's 3 ways to jump in. Number 1, go scroll back to the first one in episode 691. Number 2, tap the link in your show notes at any time for the Start Here series, or you can just go to starthereseries.com, which also gives you free access to our inner circle community where you can connect with other business leaders doing the same. The Start Here series will slow down the pace of AI so you can get ahead. The only thing out of the dozens or maybe even hundreds of small little features and updates that Apple announced. The only one that I actually looked at and I'm like, hmm, this is kind of new, is the new Reframe feature. So this lets you transform your photos with easy-to-use AI editing tools like spatial reframing. So spatial reframing just looks like— so this is some of the, uh, kind of the intelligence that Apple has baked into its camera and software. The good thing is they said that this, you will be able to retroactively go back. This essentially looks at a photo it kind of spatially recreates it, you know, in a 3-dimensional way. So you can almost go back to old photos and you're like, ah, this wasn't the right angle, this wasn't the right framing, and you can adjust it, right? So, oh, as if you were, you know, taking 2 steps backwards, 2 steps to the right, and completely adjusting the angle of the photo. So that is the— again, out of the dozens of features, that's the only one I looked at and I'm like, huh, that's pretty cool. All right, next, Apple says you can write with Siri virtually anywhere you type, compose, edit, and send messages. All right, so bringing some 2020 technology. Yeah, this stuff's been around for literally 5+ years, yet Apple thought it was a big enough deal to include. All right, so this is again the language here from Apple on what's new. So they said, just ask Siri. Powered by Apple Intelligence, Siri AI is your conversational AI assistant with entirely new capabilities, including the new Siri app. So that is a dedicated app that brings together all of your conversations in one place. So you can ask a question on your iPhone and pick up where you left off on your iPad. You can take actions in more apps. Siri AI can take actions in apps like Messages, Music, Reminders, and more based on what you're doing at the moment. And you can quickly edit a message you just sent or add a song you hear in the car to your workout playlist. You can tap into broad world knowledge, right? There's that partnership with Google, which we'll talk about here in a second. You can ask Siri about virtually any topic that's on your mind, from important facts to recipes and travel recommendations. Next, you can customize how Siri sounds, but only if you're on the latest iPhone. Yeah, so some of these features are only available if you're on Apple's latest iPhone that just came out a few months ago. So if you're on the, you know, Apple iPhone 15 or the Apple iPhone 16, right, the two hardware devices that they heavily promoted at the time, like buy this and you get all this Apple intelligence. Well, you don't get all of the Apple intelligence. So I'm sure we'll see more lawsuits around some of these features that they announced, and they're like, oh wait, yeah, remember when we told you the past 2 years if you buy this iPhone, you're gonna get all the Apple intelligence? Well, not all of it, because if you want to customize how Siri sounds, uh, apparently you will need only the newest iPhone. All right, there's also Siri AI in CarPlay. So on the road, you can ask the new Siri, uh, which trailhead your friend suggested, and get the answers instantly. Uh, also Another thing I'm like, this is pretty cool, but I think Google has something similar, but it's not something at least I have access to right now through all my other AI tools, but to get relevant information while you're on the call. So that part looks pretty cool. There's the call context. So if you're on the call with an airline, I think is the example they gave, you know, if you're, you know, put it on speaker, it will show you something on your screen while you're on the phone. So maybe pulling up your reservation, reservation, you know, from, your iMessage or from your mail. Uh, but so enough with the Apple marketing and messaging. Let me zoom out, tell you what's going on, and give you my take on this. So Apple's playing catch-up. We know that they're many years behind, but this is essentially what we saw from Apple. It was like a greatest hits of 2024. Nothing aside from the one or two things that I just mentioned there, maybe the spatial reframing and the, what is it called? The call context. All right. So there's maybe two novel-ish features out of dozens or hundreds that they actually rolled out yesterday. But Apple essentially admitted that its own models could not match their rivals' AI reasoning and world knowledge. And that's why it had to license and partner with Google Gemini. Yes. So this Apple intelligence is only made possible because of Google. Maybe they should have called it Google intelligence. Yes, I can't believe Apple was so cocky in 2024 to try to rebrand artificial intelligence Apple Intelligence. They couldn't deliver a single thing, and then they had to pay a quarter billion, uh, quarter billion dollars in lawsuits. So this would have been a nice time for Apple to maybe not lean so heavily into Apple Intelligence, but it seems like they just doubled down, uh, and are trying to own AI as if they did anything, but they didn't. But anyways, Apple Intelligence for the most part is powered by Google Intelligence. So without getting into too much on Apple's private cloud compute and the different models that are running locally, essentially Apple tries to, you know, do a certain split, like an 80/20 split. So they try to run what they can on device. So there is some edge AI models that Apple developed, but for anything that requires reasoning or general world knowledge, looking things up, right? It actually hands the task over to Google, right? How embarrassing for Apple, you know, where they poo-pooed on large language models and AI. They had all this weaponized research that they came out and said, "Yeah, AI's nothing. It's not going anywhere," right? They had to do that 'cause they were so far behind. So they literally had all this research that said, "Hey, AI's nothing," right? App— you know, large language models can't actually reason. Well, turns out they're gonna have to pay Google $1 billion, to actually deliver on a quarter of these promises that they gave us again. So they're just renting Google's brain, and that, if nothing else, shows you how far behind Apple actually is. So let's talk a little bit more about the tech and how it's actually a limitation, because Apple's most powerful, uh, AI features and Siri AI features are not available to the masses because it does require the newest, latest, and greatest hardware. So it does require 12GB of unified memory, and at least right now, the only iPhones in the lineup that bring that are the iPhone 17 Pro and the 17 Pro Max. On the Mac side, it will be a little bit better. Essentially, if your Mac is, you know, only 2 or 3 years old, you know, if you have the new M chips, you should be able to do most of these features on device when this rolls out, or if all this rolls out to the Mac as well. But those two upgrades, so it's the more expressive Siri that you can control with better dictation. So essentially being able to customize how Siri responds in this improved dictation that Apple talked about, those are only going to be available if you have the newest smartphone. And if you've used Apple's dictation, their built-in Apple Intelligence dictation, it is absolutely hot garbage. It is the worst, right? My wife always jokes around because I hate text messaging with my fingers because I have fat fingers and I'm a slow typer. She's like, just use the dictation. I'm like, the dictation stinks. It doesn't get any of my words right. So, you know, obviously a big part of this Apple intelligence and Siri AI moving forward is its ability to understand your voice. So if you've been frustrated by the dictation, right? And if you have, like me, I think I have an iPhone 15. 14 Pro Max or whatever they call those things. I don't think any of these features, when they do come out and when they will be available, are going to be very helpful. Because if your starting point is poor or not accurate dictation, it doesn't matter how much Apple rents out other people's intelligence. It doesn't matter if it's not going to get the baseline right, right? If the, uh, if, if, if the essence of this moving forward is creating a, assistant that you can just talk to, and it's going to be able to, you know, bring you all of this context and all of this great visual understanding and visual intelligence. Again, it doesn't matter if the very first step required in a 2, 3, 4, 5-step process is flawed. So I just do have to call that out. I do not have high hopes for Apple Intelligence, mainly because the dictation piece, which is central to everything else working, you're still going to be on the antiquated dictation unless you have the newest iPhone. All right. Yeah. So I just mentioned this, but if you have the iPhone 16, the iPhone 15, or even the base iPhone 17, those all carry only 8GB of memory. So you will not have the 12GB of unified memory required to run the smarter Siri fully. There's some other features like the, like the home camera that they launched, and I'm like, oh, that looks kind of cool, right? That you can just talk to your home cameras and it's gonna say, oh, Bill dropped off pizza and a raccoon, right? The example they did, a raccoon came and was on your porch. Yeah, those things aren't gonna work either unless they're on the newest and latest greatest hardware. The other thing to call out, even Apple's overly polished demos, my gosh, these things looked like they were shot with the world's most expensive camera. You know, it, these were obviously real people, real Apple employees doing the demos. But I don't know, Apple, can we show any emotion? These things looked more— it looks like humanoid AI, right? That's how overly polished the demos are and how robotic the humans were. Because I don't know, I'm sure Apple's worried about getting sued again. Anyways, but even the overly polished demos looked frustratingly slow. I watched these things afterwards because I'm like, I'm not going to watch this slow keynote. I waited until it was done so I could watch it on 2x. I actually put a Chrome extension so I could watch it on 2.5x. Even on 2.5x, the response time was so slow. So if you use AI as part of your day-to-day and you get this Apple Intelligence, when and if it actually comes out, I don't know. My thought is it is going to be so frustratingly slow that it's not even going to be worth it. That's me, right? And then they have this nice little animation. There's a spinning circle that fills those long pauses, right? I'm like, what are people in the audience thinking? If I work at Apple, when I'm seeing, you know, and have to wait 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds for the most absolute basic thing, like show me what's on my screen, I'm like, my gosh, uh, embarrassing, embarrassing, nothing else. But, uh, even when it does work, it depends on what your device is. Because you might not even be able to do what you want to do with the new Siri AI. But here's what Siri does best. It just brings together your context from the apps that you use most, if it works right. So Siri AI can chain tasks together across apps, uh, like pulling receipt data into spreadsheets. You can read your screen in your personal context. That part's cool. And these features are useful, yet none of it feels truly new, right? Even the ability to, you know, take in your iMessage context, right? The other thing is so many of these features are old hat, right? Being able to summarize webpages with the new Safari AI, that's been around for years, right? Being able to, you know, connect your personal context and chat with a large language model, that's been around for years as well, right? We've seen these connectors and these apps ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, they all have this. So, uh, again, is anything new? No, right? Even your iMessage, people are like, okay, what about your iMessages? Well, I don't know. I use ChatGPT and Codex to do that. I can have, uh, at any point I can have Codex go through all my iMessages on my computer. It can even respond to them. It can summarize them, et cetera. So nothing is really new. Like I said, aside from the new spatial reframing, That part looks kind of cool, but a novelty at most, right? Unless you're a professional, professional iPhone photographer. Right. But aside from that, it's just, oh, it's a fun little tool. But like I said, most of these features that Apple promised, they're old hat. All right. So Siri's personal context, that's been out in Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT. The on-screen awareness, right? Oh, that's Google Circle, right? Circle to Search. That's been out for more than a year. That's been out on millions of Google and Android devices. Microsoft's Copilot Vision. So much of this is already old. But, and then the, I mean, I don't even have to get into the writing, right? Like, oh, you know, you can write in your personal style versus your, you know, business style. And, you know, Apple's, Intelligence and Siri AI will help you do that. Again, been around for a very long time. So Apple isn't only just copying the best of AI hits from 2024, it is embarrassingly late and it might not even fully work. Apple is years behind. Uh, but they hope, I think their positioning is, well, maybe the general consumer won't know that we're so late. And maybe they won't care, right? They're really leaning heavy into the privacy aspect and hope that everyone is just going to assume that Apple is, well, they're on brand and they're safe because they did it the right way and they took their time. So again, let's talk about the rollout because we've been here before. All right. So we'll see what actually comes out. There's going to be pauses in the EU and in China, but we've seen this before. Because like I said, in June 2024, Apple announced a lot of these similar features with Apple Intelligence, and they said it would begin that fall with some features coming later that year. Sure enough, in September they said, okay, yeah, we're going to push it back a little bit. And, you know, it's just going to be some of the Apple Intelligence features. And yeah, that whole Siri thing we demoed. Yeah, that's actually not going to come. And then in October, they shipped some basic writing tools and summaries. Any redesigned Siri interface, but not improved at all. And then in October, they said, okay, all that personal context stuff. Yeah, that's later as well. And then in March 2025, Apple officially delayed everything. They said, yeah, the Siri upgrade. Yeah, we're officially delaying that. And then in June at the next WWDC, uh, they announced, you know, they addressed Siri again, but they just said that they're just going to share more later. And then in May, yeah, they had to pay that $250 million class action lawsuit. So here's the verdict. If this happened at WWDC 2023, cool. If this happened in 2024, which it did, but they didn't roll it out, it would have been great. Apple is far behind. Will this improve your life? I don't know, maybe. But if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you've been using a majority, uh, of these features in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Claude. Is this going to improve your daily life? Maybe a little bit. I sure hope so because I'm an iPhone user. I use Mac, so I'm technically rooting for Apple, but I'm not gonna hold my breath because I will probably run out of breath and then I'll get, I don't know, $60 or something in a class action lawsuit in 2 years. But So that's a wrap. I hope this episode was helpful. But let me know if you want to dive into whenever I do get beta access. If you want me to run it all down for you, let me know in the comments. Also, if you haven't already, please go to youreverydayai.com, sign up for the free daily newsletter. Thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'all.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit youreverydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time!