According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Apple may announce a major change at next week’s WWDC23 conference, which will eliminate the “Hey, Siri” wakeup phrase currently required to wake up the voice assistant Siri, and users can simply say “Siri” to activate the voice assistant.
Gurman reiterated the news on Twitter, saying the change could be one of the big announcements at the conference next week. Last November, Gurman reported that Apple was working on enabling Siri to understand and respond to commands that don’t require “Hey, Siri” as a trigger word. The difficulty with this technology is that Siri needs to be able to accurately recognize the word “Siri” in different accents and dialects, and using two words — “Hey, Siri” — can increase the likelihood that the system will correctly capture the signal. can improve the likelihood that the system will correctly capture the signal.
The change will bring Siri closer to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa, which can be triggered by simply saying “Alexa” at the beginning of a command. Gurman also said that Apple is also working to make Siri more deeply integrated with third-party apps and services, using more contextual information to provide better assistance.
In addition, Apple’s mixed reality headset is rumored to feature voice control, so improving Siri’s performance could go hand-in-hand with the release of the new device.
