Your next iPhone could have a much smarter Siri

(Image credit: Getty Images / nyc russ / Apple)

published 22 May 2023

Your next iPhone could have a much smarter Siri, if Apple's latest job adverts are any indication. Apple is investing heavily in generative AI, the same kind of tech used in models like ChatGPT, and it's hiring a whole bunch of AI experts to make that happen.

The listings were spotted by TechCrunch, who reports that some of the jobs are for the use of generative AI in visual apps: Apple is looking for experts to cover "visual generative modeling to power applications across computation photography, image and video editing, 3D shape and motion reconstruction [and] avatar generation.” Which sounds like it could encompass everything from the iPhone camera and Photos app to the Apple AR/VR headset.

Me, I'd be happy with a Siri that's faster and less likely to misunderstand me. But Apple is clearly thinking much bigger than that.

What does AI bring to Apple?

Apple, as ever, isn't saying. And the job listings are vague enough that they could mean brand new things we haven't seen before, or just better computational photography in the iPhone 15.

Tim Cook won't be drawn on Apple's AI plans, but he has said that generative AI is "very interesting" and that Apple sees AI's potential as "huge". And 9to5Mac found an interesting paragraph in one of the job descriptions that seems to set out Apple's stall pretty well: it says that "latest advances in this field could transform he way people communicate, create, connect and consume media"; it goes on to predict that generative AI tech will "transform Apple's mobile computing platforms."

With WWDC just a few weeks away we might get some more hints then. But something's clearly afoot: TechCrunch notes that nearly 30 new AI jobs have been posted by Apple in just the last three weeks, and there are currently 88 open job listings at Apple with AI in the title. 48 of them have been posted since March.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).