Apple plans to change Voice Assistant’s ‘Hey Siri’ command to…

Washington:

US tech giant Apple is looking to change its trigger phrase from “Hey Siri” to just “Siri,” a new report suggests.

According to The Verge, the aforementioned report was shared by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and this change means users will only need to say “Siri” followed by a command to activate the smart assistant.

Gorman noted that Apple has been working on this feature for the past several months and is expected to roll it out next year or in 2024.

However, for the functionality to work effectively, Apple would need to invest “a significant amount of AI training and basic engineering work,” as the smart assistant would need to understand a single alert word in many dialects and dialects.

The current two-word playback phrase, “Hey Siri,” increases the chance that Siri will pick it up.

The Verge reports that switching to a single alert phrase could help Siri compete with Amazon’s Alexa, which already allows users to activate the smart assistant with “Alexa” instead of “Hey Alexa.”

This will also put Siri on top of the Google Assistant, which requires ‘Ok Google’ or ‘Hey Google’ phrases to activate, although users don’t have to repeat the alert word when uttering successive requests.

Before the voice assistant was turned off last year, even Microsoft switched from “Hey Cortana” to “Cortana” on smart speakers.

The shorter launch phrase isn’t the only change expected from Siri; According to Gurman, Apple may 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 small tweaks to the voice assistant, adding a new voice that was recorded by a LGBTQ+ community member and introducing a new Siri activation voice.