Apple's smart home hub is reportedly not coming out in 2025

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If you've been waiting for Apple's take on the smart home hub, unfortunately, you'll have to wait one more year or so. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports the device is most likely coming out in 2026. The cause for the delay is Siri. The Apple Intelligence version of the voice assistant has been pushed back so far, so it makes sense that a device that would be heavily reliant on voice would be delayed.

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Apple might tap OpenAI, Anthropic to power AI version of Siri

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Apple is reportedly considering outside help to run its artificial intelligence-powered version of Siri. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that the tech giant approached OpenAI and Anthropic to develop versions of their large language models for testing on its private cloud infrastructure, aiming to create an "LLM Siri."

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Apple introduces bilingual Siri, full-page screenshots and more in iOS 17 beta

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Apple has launched the first public beta versions of iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, bringing new features that enhance the user experience. Some features include bilingual Siri, full-page screenshots, and better SMS sorting for dual-SIM users.

Bilingual support for Sir allows users to ask questions in a mix of English and one of the selected Indic languages. For example, users can speak to Siri in both English and Hindi or English and Telugu, Punjabi, Kannada, or Marathi. This feature is helpful for India-based users who often use more than one language in their daily conversations. Apple is catching up with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, which introduced multilingual support in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

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Apple reportedly wants you to say 'Siri' instead of 'Hey Siri' as a trigger phrase

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Apple is supposedly looking to swap Siri's trigger phrase. Instead of "Hey Siri," the company just wants you to use "Siri." Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that this feature has been in the works for the past several months, and it's expected to come out next year or in 2024. But Apple needs to put in a "significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work" to get this feature to function properly. Its smart assistant will need to understand that single wake word in different accents and dialects. The "Hey Siri" two-word trigger phrase has a better chance of the smart assistant picking it up.

Changing to the single wake word will put Apple in line with Amazon's Alexa and give it an edge over Google Assistant. But the latter doesn't need the wake word when you're saying back-to-back commands. Aside from the shorter trigger phrase, Apple is exploring third-party integration for Siri and improvements in its ability to process user requests.

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