When iOS 18 releases this fall, Siri may do more than just turn the edges of your iPhone into a glowing rainbow. The Apple Intelligence feature won’t launch until 2025, for those who didn’t test it this year, but reports suggest Siri itself will still get natural language updates and other key features before the year is out.
He also wrote that Siri will have “more knowledge about Apple products,” presumably referring to the device support features Apple mentioned during its WWDC keynote.
Another interesting news: iOS 18 beta testers can now change Siri’s wake word to whatever they want using a new accessibility feature called Voice Shortcuts by going to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Shortcuts > Set Voice Shortcut > Siri (not Siri Request) ), as 9 to 5 Wrote this last week. You must pause after speaking the new wake word, otherwise your phone won’t acknowledge it and the change won’t propagate to your HomePods. But crucially, the new wake word still works even if you turn off “Hey Siri” in the current developer beta. If you’re tired of starting your iPhone while trying to talk to your HomePod, this is great news.
In addition to direct improvements to Siri, Apple said ChatGPT will be available for free in iOS 18 later this year, although Gurman wrote that it likely won’t be the first version of iOS 18. ChatGPT that it can serve bet requests that cannot be handled by GPT-4o will be provided, giving the user a chance to agree or deny (along with a disclaimer about its trustworthiness).
We won’t know if Siri is actually that good now until this rolls out, but there are at least signs that we’re finally getting the digital assistant we’ve been waiting for. However, it’s unclear whether the upgraded Siri won’t appear on HomePods or iPhones other than the iPhone 15 Pro like Apple Intelligence. Hopefully, Siri improvements will differentiate themselves from new generative AI features, and less powerful devices like the iPhone 15 and iPad that don’t have Apple’s M-series chips will get at least some of those features.
