Siri is so bad at everything

Legend2440

The only voice assistant that has impressed me recently is the new ChatGPT Voice Mode with background reasoning. It's miles ahead of the other assistants. The only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.

IAmGraydon

How is a link to a reddit thread with 2 sentences on the front page? This place has gone WAY downhill.

Razengan

I updated my barely 1-year-old Apple Watch Ultra 3 to watchOS 27. Never installed any betas on it. Tried to set a timer via Siri after a spinner for several seconds: "Cannot set a timer because the Clock app is not installed on this device." F to the ninth heck whoever is in charge of that crap at Apple.

scrumper

The whole thing is buggered. My latest, in car, on 26.6.2 with phone connected via bluetooth. I hold the voice button on my steering wheel down to activate Siri: "Call Fred." "You'll need to unlock your phone for that." "Call Fred." "You'll need to unlock your phone for that." "Call Fred." "OK, calling Fred." Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up. Every time I try to call from the car now I have to ask it at least twice, usually three times. And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car: "Call George." "OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist." WTAF.

bragr

Gemini in android auto just refuses to place calls for you now for "safety" but will also have an extended argument with you about that at the same time.

neya

I'm sure there will be someone to defend Apple here. "Maybe it's a privacy thing" What a pile of garbage Siri is.

bel8

Couldn't they use something like Jev to make Siri really good and fast at processing the most frequent commands?

chaostheory

Well, everything but privacy and efficiency because it runs on your device and not on a remote server. This also explains why Siri still isn’t good.

wilkystyle

Siri IS bad at many things, but the Reddit post is not a particularly compelling example. I am continually astounded by the fact that Apple has had an on-device voice assistant for 15 years, on a vertical hardware/software stack that they own completely, and yet which cannot reliably perform even the most basic tasks. Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock. Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm" And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound. And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better. edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.

retrac98

I wouldn’t mind it being useless if only I could remove it from my device. :(

timbaboon

First request after enabling Siri AI Beta: “Play Powerwolf on Apple Music.” “Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.” “Play PowerWOLF on Apple Music.” “Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.” “Fine, just play Sabaton” It got that right I guess :/ But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?

LUmBULtERA

I was optimistic when I updated MacOS, iOS, and got a new series 12 watch to replace my series 8. But... it's terrible. It doesn't seem to be able to do much of what I ask, and Siri on my watch is somehow less responsive than it was on my Series 8 watch. When I talk to Siri on my watch, the Siri icon thing spins around as if it does something, then it does nothing? I don't understand.

cogman10

It's the exact wrong place for an LLM. It SEEMS like it should be the right place, but it isn't. The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes. Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.

TechRemarker

While certainly drastically better than before, it still fails at so many of the basics. I use primarily in the car, when need to be hands free. My requests are almost always say, "Directions to Starbucks". Which Starbucks.. and proceeds to list multiple then have to remind it each and every time the one first one... the one closest to me.. the one always go to... etc. So then try to do Directions to Starbucks (Town Name) (that I'm currently in, and still asks did you mean this one or this one, or everyone in a while will say did you mean City (state I'm in), aka the one down the street or did you mean that city but in another state a hundred miles away that you have never gone to. Those types of things always happened with old Siri and persist with new Siri. But now almost always when asking for reminders etc, before it would handle fine, not it says did you mean "what I said), or swapping out word for another someone similar word, etc. The problem before was it had essentially no memory or ability to learn about me. With LLMS thought that would finally change, but it has not ing general. I can say call John. And it will say did you mean John (the one you call every day for the past decade) or do you mean the John, you have never called but is in your contacts from High School? ChatGPT is amazing, and knows me and never makes any of those mistakes but of course is less integrated than Siri can be. Here's for hoping with the new LLM foundation Siri will be able to grow more quickly, but right now, it is the dumbest of the bunch. I get they don't want it to be a full chat bot, and I'm ok with it being more limited, but if it's going to be limited to a certain domain, such as control the home, setting alarms, reminders, directions, it should be absolutely rock solid at that.

nsbk

Siri is the only thing in the whole universe which can make me rage. Not computers, not $dayjob, not my car, not getting lost while riding a rally in the desert, not people. Siri. Only Siri can do that.

aspectmin

Apple makes great products, and I am well vested in its ecosystem. With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard. - Siri, as discussed here - autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space. - and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.

epgui

So it’s pretty obvious that Siri sucks. Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?

drcongo

"Hey Siri, continue playing my audiobook" used to work, now it starts a random book from my library, even ones I've already listened to. "Hey Siri, play" used to continue playing whatever was last playing, now it starts random songs on Apple Music. Those are the only two things I use Siri for apart from controlling lights.

tito

Is there any way to tap into Facetime from a non-Apple device? From what I can see the only thing that durably keeps me on iOS at this point is Facetime. (Siri AI is bad. Lots of "Did you mean". I'm back on Siri Classic now.)

everdrive

It's unmitigated infantilism. Outside of the physically disabled, who would need such a feature? Is touching your phone to make a call less convenient than speaking to it? If touching your phone is so inconvenient, then why do most adults spend hours per day on their phones? What most of these sorts of features do is not to add convenience; instead they remove the need to exercise impulse control. They reduce "friction," which means you do the action more often. But they don't improve convenience. Convenience is not needing to walk outside to the well to fetch a bucket of water. It's not someone making an app so automatic that you no longer need to use your executive function.