Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Look out, Google Assistant! Siri could soon get a pretty significant upgrade

siri upgrade vocaliq ios smartphone iphone apple
Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr
Google may be working on a new personal assistant, but that doesn’t mean Apple users should be too jealous yet. In fact, it looks like Siri’s set to get some pretty substantial upgrades of her own.

Apple may be looking to give Siri a boost using a U.K. company called VocalIQ, which it bought out last year.

Recommended Videos

In fact, reports suggest that VocalIQ’s technology is quite a bit more capable than the tech from companies like Google and Microsoft — so much so that Apple bought the company out before it was even able to release a consumer product. After the acquisition, Apple asked the VocalIQ team to start integrating its tech into Siri.

If initial tests are anything to go by, VocalIQ’s technology could give Siri a serious boost in how it understands language. VocalIQ’s tech is based around understanding everyday language, rather than simply the commands that users have to memorize in order to use today’s mobile assistants. In fact, when the team behind VocalIQ asked questions using everyday language, its tech was able to understand 90 percent of the time, while other assistants only understood around 20 percent of the time.

VocalIQ’s tech, according to a report from Tech Insider, also understands context. For example, if you ask the assistant for a Japanese restaurant that’s kid-friendly and within 5 miles of your home, it will be able to provide suggestions. If, however, a few minutes later, you decide against Japanese and want Italian instead, simply ask it to find an Italian restaurant instead and it will do so, remembering that it has to be kid-friendly and within 5 miles, without you having to repeat those things. That’s a pretty big breakthrough for a personal assistant, and will be especially helpful for systems that might not have a screen, like a smart car or speaker.

Of course, it’s not yet known exactly when Apple plans to use VocalIQ’s tech in Siri. Some suggest that it may slowly happen over time rather than in one big update, however, others hope that Apple will radically change Siri in the near future.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
iOS 18 may give Siri the upgrade we’ve been waiting for
Hey Siri

Apple isn’t immune from the AI craze sweeping the rest of the industry. Following the likes of Google with Gemini Nano, Apple is set to roll out AI upgrades to the iPhone with iOS 18. Code-named “Project Graymatter,” the iOS 18 update will bring a variety of AI-powered enhancements to the iPhone and Siri in particular.

According to AppleInsider, the features are being tested in advance of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), and one of the biggest is called “Graymatter Catch Up.” The feature is tied to Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, which will now allow users to request and receive an AI overview of the most recent notifications.

Read more
The Google Pixel Fold 2 could get a massive display upgrade
A game running on the Google Pixel Fold's open screen.

It seems Google’s next foldable phone will go big — quite literally. According to Ross Young of DSCC (which is now a part of industry analysis heavyweight Countepoint Research), the screen size of the Pixel Fold 2 will be bigger than what other leaks have suggested.

When the first set of Pixel Fold 2 leaks came out with alleged renders, they predicted a 7.9-inch inner foldable screen. Young writes in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the inner flexible panel measures 8.02 inches, which is a major bump compared to the 7.6-inch OLED panel on the first-gen Google Pixel Fold.

Read more
How Siri helped me out in an almost impossible situation
Hey Siri

Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, has lived in the shadow of Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa for a while. But recently, it proved more useful to me than any of its rivals by helping me out of an impossibly difficult situation.

What Siri did was listen and, crucially, hear, — which was something my dad was suddenly unable to do. And then, it communicated important information in a way that saved the day.
Mutton Jeff

Read more