- Apple execs Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak have explained how the company's approach to AI is different from rivals'
- This includes Siri AI not being interested in "sycophancy" or being a "romantic partner"
- They also highlight how Siri AI doesn't require you to be a "prompt expert" but does respect your privacy
It’s been a long wait, but Apple’s AI vision is almost here. The company's overhauled Siri voice assistant, Siri AI, is a key component of iOS 27, which is due out later this year, and is currently in beta. But if Apple is to be believed, Siri AI won’t just be a ChatGPT or Gemini clone with Siri’s voice.
In an interview with Mostly Human — via MacRumors — Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak discussed the company’s approach to AI and highlighted three ways that the new Siri is different from competing chatbots.
The most eye-catching statements relate to how Siri AI communicates with you, and specifically that it won’t act as an AI boyfriend or girlfriend for anyone. Federighi argued that “if you use many of the existing chatbots, they're really focused on engagement to a large degree. And sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself, and then use that as a basis to establish a connection.”
While not naming names, this is a clear dig at AI rivals like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, which do, to varying degrees, allow for this odd relationship-building. Indeed, we’ve heard of people falling in love with ChatGPT, using chatbots as therapists, and, even more alarmingly, that as much as 26% of Gen Z have dated an AI.
With Siri, though, apparently none of this will be possible, with Federighi going on to say that “the way that we have designed Siri, Siri really wants to say 'Listen, that's not what I'm here for, right? I'm here to help you. I can help you get things done. I can help you learn about the world.' But if you try to engage Siri as a romantic partner, Siri's not up for that. Siri's 100% not into that.”
Simple, useful, and preserves your privacy
That’s not the only way in which Siri apparently differs, though — or the only subtle dig Apple makes here about rival platforms.
Another is in Joswiak’s claim that he doesn’t want iPhone users to have to become "prompt experts" — which seems like a dig at the need to design complex prompts to maximize the potential of other AIs.
He added that “we don't do AI for AI's sake. 'Hey, look at us, we're doing AI.' It's 'How does AI make everything better?' And that makes our products better, our features better.” Which is perhaps not so much a response to ChatGPT and Gemini as to the fact that AI is increasingly being inserted into almost every piece of software we use, whether it’s truly beneficial or not.
And while some other AIs can gather an alarming amount of data about you and share that with their parent companies — even going so far, in Gemini’s case, as to not let you save conversation histories if you don’t consent to Google employees potentially viewing your chats and using them to train models — Apple claims to be taking a privacy-first approach.
On that point, Federighi said, “I think it's a challenging thing for a lot of people to understand the distinction between what your iPhone knows and what, say, Apple as a company knows. Your iPhone is yours, right? Your data is yours, and it stays on your phone, and [under] your control, and Siri is using it for you. Apple doesn't get to know any of this stuff, and that is very different [from what] I think most players in the space [are doing], and I think super important.”
So, while Siri is certainly late to the AI party, it could have some real advantages over rival services, though it remains to be seen how good — and how true to these principles — it will be in practice.
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