Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak sat down for an interview with Mostly Human after during WWDC, discussing the iOS 27 Siri changes, Apple's take on AI, new child safety protections, and more.
Apple set out to deliver an AI utility, not an AI companion. When asked whether users could create an AI boyfriend or girlfriend with the new Siri, Federighi said absolutely not. Siri is meant to help, and Apple didn't want to focus on engagement like other AI companies. From Federighi:
Quite the opposite, because as you may know, 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.
We view it quite the opposite. I mean, 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 percent not into that.
Joswiak said Apple didn't want to do AI for AI's sake, and the company wanted AI to blend in with existing iPhone features.
We like when technology disappears, right? You just focus on what you want to do, or you focus on the content. And it's the same thing with AI. [...] 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.
He went on to say that he doesn't want iPhone users to have to be "prompt experts" to use AI. "We want to meet them where they're at," said Joswiak. "Have the products and features become better, and this is just a really helpful technology in making those features and products better."
Federighi wanted to make it clear that Apple's approach to AI is privacy forward.
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 your control and Siri is using it for you. Apple doesn't get to know any of this stuff, and that is very different than I think most players in the space, and I think super important.
The full interview covers other topics like child safety, AI and jobs, iOS 27 features, Apple's 50th anniversary, the future of AI, scammers, and much more.