Apple will not ape the Amazon Echo but Siri will simply learn to do more

AI assistants these days can only get better and smarter, but while Google and Amazon are trying to get their assistants into your living room (Echo and Home), Apple indeed seems to be least interested in this approach.

According to Time magazine, Apple has no apparent interest in copying the Echo. What this means is that we should not expect an Amazon Echo-like Siri speaker coming from Apple in the near future.

The news comes from Tim Bajarin who spoke to Apple executives and gave out a few details about the company’s future plans with its voice assistant Siri. Turns out that Apple is more interested in turning Siri into an omnipresent AI assistant that works across devices rather than being present in one single unit or box.

They do not want a Siri machine, but seek to make Siri more flexible, so that she can take commands from multiple devices and be used as a control hub to get things done, especially in smart homes.

The author cited how Siri does not even need to be visible to be used like in the case of Apple’s pricey AirPods. The AirPods can summon the voice assistant and lets you use it in a hands-free way, letting you ask Siri simple questions, navigate or even send text messages. But in order for Siri to be omnipresent, she will have to get smarter and as of now, she is no match for Google Home or Google Assistant.

The deal with Google is that Assistant is only available on smartphones and Google Home. With Amazon’s Alexa, it just the Amazon Echo speaker (with some more third-party devices coming thanks to Huawei and Samsung). But with Apple, there are plenty more devices from the iMac, to the MacBooks, the iPhone, the Apple Watch and now even Apple AirPods. All Apple has to do is tune Siri to be a bit smarter.