Apple won’t wait until next year for some iOS 18 Siri improvements

Siri might do more than turn the edges of your iPhone into a bright rainbow when iOS 18 launches this fall. Apple Intelligence features won’t launch until 2025 for those who don’t test them in beta this year, but reports suggest that Siri itself will still receive natural language updates and other important features before the end of the year.

He also writes that Siri “will have greater knowledge of Apple products,” likely referring to the device support features Apple mentioned during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.

For another fun detail: Currently, iOS 18 beta testers can change Siri’s wake word to whatever they want using a new accessibility feature called Vocal Shortcuts by going to Settings > Accessibility > Vocal Shortcuts > Set Up Vocal Shortcuts > Siri (not “Siri Requests”), such as 9to5Mac wrote last week. You need to pause after saying the new wake word or your phone won’t recognize it and the change won’t extend to your HomePods. But most importantly, the new wake word works even if you turn off “Hey Siri” in the current developer beta. That’s great news if you’re tired of your iPhone waking up when you try to talk to your HomePod.

In addition to the direct Siri improvements, Apple also said that ChatGPT will be available for free in iOS 18 later this year, although Gurman writes that it may not make the first version of iOS 18. When it arrives, Siri will offer to fulfill requests that can. Do not use a ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o, giving users the opportunity to agree or decline (along with a disclaimer about its reliability).

We won’t know until all of this is released whether Siri is actually getting better now, but there are at least signs that we might finally get the digital assistant we’ve been waiting for. It’s unclear whether the updated Siri will come to HomePods or iPhones other than the iPhone 15 Pro, like Apple Intelligence. Hopefully the Siri improvements will differentiate themselves from the new generative AI features, and less capable devices like the iPhone 15 and iPads without Apple’s M-series chips will get at least some of them.