I’m a longtime iPhone user who has learned over the years to keep things very simple with Siri. Even then, it doesn’t always work. Siri won’t always catch that. And if you thought Siri was falling behind Google Assistant or Alexa before the dawn of ChatGPT-like AI, well, Siri’s performance is even more annoying.
I also learned to contain my rage when Siri fails with simple commands. But I saw myself in Larry David’s hilarious interaction with Siri, which is probably the best anti-Apple ad anyone could have created. I’m not saying it’s an anti-iPhone campaign, but it gets the job done in the best possible way. It’s certainly funnier than any of Samsung’s ads that take hits at Apple.
The clip you’re about to see also makes a great case for why we need iOS 18 to bring AI features to voice control and Siri.
Larry David’s hilarious interaction with Siri has likely been stage. It’s all part of the new Curb Your Enthusiasm season. Larry wants directions to a restaurant, and hell follows. It’s incredibly funny, and I’ve watched it a few times.
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That said, Siri can’t be that bad. It can’t fail like that in real life. Put differently, you can’t rely on Siri to fail that consistently. The whole bit had to have been carefully orchestrated. But many people will see themselves in Larry. The Siri frustration is real. Talking to Siri can be super annoying.
It’s even worse if you consider what’s been happening in the past year. Chatbots can interpret voice commands with ease. Both ChatGPT and Gemini do it. You can set Google’s AI to replace Google Assistant on Android devices.
Moreover, I’ve had the chance to see the Humane Ai Pin at MWC, and voice recognition was never a problem. The pin got the commands right and answered promptly. Even when the internet connection was laggy, nothing was lost.
Luckily for iPhone users like me, Apple is rumored to bring its own generative AI language models to the iPhone via iOS 18. Siri is rumored to get a big revamp which will integrate AI features. Furthermore, the iPhone 16 models should get microphone upgrades, which is an indication that Apple is looking to improve Siri.
None of that is confirmed, of course. But Apple will likely unveil several AI features at WWDC this summer and then make some of them available to iPhone and iPad users via the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 betas.
Until then, whenever Siri annoys me, I’ll always have Larry David’s Siri to get back to.
