Apple is working on an initiative to replace its voice assistant Siri's trigger phrase by dropping the "Hey" so that a user only needs to say "Siri" — along with a command, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman noted in his latest newsletter. While the move might seem almost negligible from a user's end, the switch is a technical challenge requiring significant AI training and underlying engineering work.
"Apple has been working on the change for several months and — if all goes to plan — hopes to roll out the switch either next year or the year after," Gurman added.
The newsletter also notes that if Apple is successful in the shift, it will match Amazon's Alexa, which requires users to say "Alexa" rather than "Hey Alexa". It would also put Siri ahead of Google's voice assistant, which uses "OK Google" or "Hey Google" as its wake words but does not require you to repeat them for back-to-back commands or follow-ups.
Before Microsoft put down its voice assistant Cortana for good, the company also made a similar change in 2018, requiring users to only say "Cortana" instead of "Hey Cortana" to wake it up on smart speakers.
The company has been testing the simplified wake word with employees and collecting the necessary training data to help Siri understand the singular phrase "Siri" in multiple accents and dialects. "Hey Siri" increases the likelihood of the system correctly picking up the signal.
"By removing the 'Hey' in 'Hey Siri', Apple would also, in turn, speed up back-to-back requests. The company has recently made a few other tweaks to Siri, including redesigning the interface on the Apple TV as part of tvOS 16.1," Gurman said.
He also noted that Apple is working on integrating the voice assistant deeper into third-party apps and services and improving its ability to understand users and take the correct course of action.
Given how all Apple devices can wake up at once hearing the trigger phrase, Apple also needs to develop a solution that allows users to only wake up specific devices and not all of them.
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