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

Siri may do more than just make the edges of your iPhone become a glowing rainbow when iOS 18 arrives this fall. Apple Intelligence features won’t be available until 2025 for anyone who doesn’t beta test them this year, but reports suggest that Siri itself will still receive natural language updates and other key features before the end of the year.

It also writes that Siri will “be more knowledgeable about Apple products,” likely referring to the device support features Apple mentioned during its keynote at the Global Developers Conference.

Another fun fact: Currently, iOS 18 beta testers can change their Siri wake-up word to anything they want using a modern accessibility feature called Voice Shortcuts by going to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Shortcuts > Set Up Voice Shortcuts > Siri (not “Siri Requests”). How 9 to 5Mac wrote last week. You must pause after saying the modern wake word, otherwise your phone will not acknowledge it and the change will not affect your HomePods. But most importantly, the modern wake word works even if you turn off “Hey Siri” in the current developer beta. This is great news if you’re tired of your iPhone activating when you’re trying to talk to your HomePod.

In addition to the immediate improvements to Siri, Apple also said that ChatGPT will be available for free in iOS 18 later this year, though Gurman writes that the first version of iOS 18 may not arrive. When it does, Siri will offer to send requests that ChatGPT may not support based on GPT-4o, giving users the option to agree or reject (with a caveat regarding its reliability).