Siri is getting an AI makeover soon, but it will of course be a uniquely Apple take on the chatbot idea. And it’s about time.

In iOS 18, this fall’s update to the iPhone operating system, Apple may overhaul Siri to include a large language model (LLM), or what has misleadingly come to be called AI. Siri is arguably the worst of all voice assistants in terms of reliability, accuracy, and actually understanding what you say, so simply integrating a ChatGPT-like bot would be a huge step forward. But a server-side behemoth that violates privacy and ignores copyright is not the Apple Way.

"Until now, conversational features like Siri have been notorious for their false positives. They assume intent and then respond to the question they think you're asking," Adrienne Hunter Wong, lead AI product designer at Khan Academy, told Lifewire via email. "They also have trouble completing requests if you don't ask them in a specific way, using rigid language. If you forget that the name of your grocery list in Todoist is 'Groceries' (plural), Siri won't know what you're asking her to do when you ask her to add eggs to your 'Groceries' list."

There’s no way Apple is going to let Siri run wild, harangue you, and try to convince you to get a divorce. But then again, Siri is so far behind that it desperately needs to catch up, so Apple will surely want to add some sort of LLM capabilities to its ailing voice assistant. One thing AI chatbots are really good at is understanding what you mean when you talk to them. They’re accurate and surprisingly fast, considering they’re all cloud-based.