Washington:
US tech giant Apple wants to change Siri’s trigger phrase from “Hey Siri,” to just “Siri,” a new report suggests.
According to The Verge, the said report was shared by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and the change would mean that users only need to say “Siri” followed by a command to activate the smart assistant.
Gurman noted that Apple has been working on this feature for the past few months and is expected to roll out next year or in 2024.
However, for the functionality to work effectively, Apple would have to invest a “significant amount of AI training and underlying technical work”, as the smart assistant must understand the single wake word in numerous accents and dialects.
The current two-word trigger phrase, “Hey Siri,” increases the chances of Siri picking it up.
The Verge reported that switching to a single wake phrase could help Siri compete with Amazon’s Alexa, which already allows users to activate the smart assistant using “Alexa” instead of “Hey Alexa.”
It would also put Siri in front of Google Assistant, which requires the “Ok Google” or “Hey Google” phrases to be activated, though users don’t have to repeat the wake word when saying back-to-back requests.
Before Microsoft retired its voice assistant last year, even Microsoft had switched from “Hey Cortana” to “Cortana” on smart speakers.
The shorter trigger phrase isn’t the only change expected from Siri; according to Gurman, Apple can also integrate Siri into third-party apps and services and increase its ability to understand and process user requests.
According to The Verge, Apple recently made some minor tweaks to the voice assistant, adding a new voice recorded by a member of the LGBTQ+ community and introducing a new Siri activation sound.
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