Mark Gurman said that Apple is working on a way to make the wake phrase for its voice assistant just “Siri.”
A report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple wants to change Siri’s wake-up phrase from “Hey Siri” to just “Siri.” This means that to use the smart assistant, you would just need to say “Siri” and then a command.
Gurman said that Apple has been working on this feature for a while and that it should come out next year or in 2024. But Apple will have to put in “a significant amount of AI training and engineering work” to make the feature work because the smart assistant will need to understand the single wake word in many different accents and dialects. The two-word trigger phrase “Hey Siri” makes it more likely that Siri will hear it.
Siri might need to switch to a single wake word to keep up with Amazon’s Alexa, which can already be activated by just saying “Alexa” instead of “Hey Alexa.” It would also put Siri one step ahead of Google Assistant, which can only be turned on by saying “Ok Google” or “Hey Google” (though you don’t have to say the wake word again if you give back-to-back commands). Even Microsoft changed the voice assistant on smart speakers from “Hey Cortana” to “Cortana” before turning it off last year.
Siri will likely get more changes than just a shorter trigger phrase. Gurman says that Apple could make Siri work better with third-party apps and services and improve its ability to understand and respond to user requests. Apple recently made some small changes to the voice assistant. They added a new voice recorded by a member of the LGBTQ+ community and changed the sound that Siri makes when it is activated.
