The big changes to Siri that you're looking for will arrive before the end of the year

If you've had enough of Siri not giving you a straight answer to a query and instead telling you that it found three websites and one of them might contain the answer to your question, hold on. Better days for Siri are coming. If you've installed the iOS 18.1 Developer Beta on your iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max and are running the Apple Intelligence Beta, you might be asking yourself what is the big deal about AI-enhanced Siri. After all, the only changes to the virtual assistant in the iOS 18.1 Beta are cosmetic.

Sure, the glowing lights around the edges of the iPhone when Siri is summoned look cool, and Siri's more conversational tone is also a nice improvement. But ask Siri which iPhone was the first to come with Siri and you are given three websites to look through. Ask Gemini Advanced, the AI-powered replacement for Google Assistant on the Pixel series, and you get one correct response: "The first phone with Siri was the iPhone 4S released in 2011."

Siri will not show any improvements until the end of this year when ChatGPT integration is added to Siri for iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users. It hasn't appeared in the iOS 18.1 Developer Beta although it could still show up in the stable version of iOS 18.1 (expected in October) or iOS 18.2 (expected in December). With ChatGPT on board, if Siri can't answer a query, instead of sending you to the three websites it pushes you to read, Siri will turn to ChatGPT to provide you with a useful straight answer.

Before Siri passes along a request for information from ChatGPT, you'll be asked to give it permission to do so first.

While Apple Intelligence includes Writing Tools that allow you to change the tone of an email or text before you send it, or have AI proofread your missive, you won't be able to create an email or text for a certain occasion until ChatGPT arrives. Once that happens, you'll be able to ask it to write a letter or create an email asking your landlord to fix a leak. You'll also be able to create a letter or email complaining to your carrier explaining that you never gave permission for a rep to add a new line to your account. Image generation will also be possible on ChatGPT.

To show you how cool this can be, we recently told you that the new Opera browser for iOS includes a built-in AI platform called Aria that is powered by Google and Open AI. I asked it to create pictures of Paul McCartney playing lacrosse (no, he is not holding a Hofner violin bass), Shakespeare holding an iPhone, Dr. Gregory House holding the Stanley Cup, and Felix the Cat playing poker. Check out the images. Apple iPhone users can install the new Opera browser here.

The downside here for iPhone users is that if they want the useful version of Siri that won't make them look through three websites to find the answer to a query, they have to own the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or the upcoming iPhone 16 series. And the latest rumor heard around the water cooler (if that water cooler is located at Mark Gurman's office at Bloomberg) is that the iPhone SE 4 will carry 8GB RAM, enough for it to support Apple Intelligence.

Will we see a big year for iPhone 16 shipments as iPhone users around the world upgrade in order to use the AI features offered with Apple Intelligence.