Apple previously pitched a vision of local-first AI for privacy, but seems to have badly miscalculated the kind of customer experience they could provide. My personal experience is that Siri has suffered greatly.

Case in point, I like to listen to music in the car, and Siri now confidently starts playing artists whose names sound nothing like what I requested. Also maddening "Play [x] on Apple Music" "You'll need to authorize me to use Youtube Music"

Still I live with / pay for so much that is broken based on a kind of Apple privacy vibes inertia. Siri being wired up to more of my personal information plus Apple maybe shipping that data to Google is going to make me reevaluate that.

The UX and integration with regular phone features is what makes the tool shine and by now there should be plenty of open source models and know how to create their own.

What is Google offering that Apple can't figure out on their own?

Maybe people don't personal assitant AI enough to justify the investment? My phone has probably 6 or 7 AI tools that have talking features that I don't ever explore.

Google closes their trade deficit to half a billion dollars per year.

> "Hey Siri, whens the next Formula 1 race in Montreal"

and she responds with the same infuriating answer I typically get

> "Hmm, I found some interesting results on the web, I can show them to you if you ask again from your iPhone"

I don't care what pride Apple has to swallow, or if they have to layoff 10,000 people.

I just want my device ecosystem to be able to do what its competitors have been able to do for a decade, or what Ive been able to build myself for the last 3 years. A working and useful voice assistant.

At this point Im convinced Tim Cook could sit at a terminal himself and ship a better version of what Apple has in an afternoon.

It means that Apple's huge, expensive AI team has basically failed.

And it presumably means that Apple is willing to accept Google's practices for ML model training and use.

Am I interpreting that correctly?

I can understand that to a degree but that means the future for Apple is as a technology integrator, not a fundamental technology company.

As I type that out I guess I’m realizing that has always been true.

$1B for the software and $1B for the hardware, every few years.

Next to all the money they poured into Liquid glAss, this will be the worst investment Apple has ever made.