I would like it to be known that I hated Siri before it was cool. I have written many articles on the subject. I am an anti-siri hipster. But when a train happens, you would better believe that I will be seated in front.
Earlier this week (as Jon Gruber from Fireball pointed out), a reditor named Guitar Scary started a wire on a unique but deeply disturbing experience with Siri. When we asked him the apparently simple question “What month is it?” The unhappy vocal assistant replied: “Sorry, I don't understand.” As the frightening guitar does not say it unreasonable, “Apple Intelligence this, Apple Intelligence that. Siri is still very horrible.”
Commentators, predictable, tear Siri into pieces, joking about his inaccuracy (“Here, Siri now uses advanced automatic learning algorithms! So she is more intelligent? She is simply stupid,” said one.) And offering their own similar experiences. Those who repeated the experience with the same wording obtained the same result, while slight variations of label obtained answers which were bad in different ways, as “what is it currently?” leading to “it's 2025”.
I tested this for myself and I was more likely, even if I also saw interesting variations on uselessness. In my first round “What month is it?”, “What is the month?”, And “What month is it currently?” Everything resulted in flat answers of “sorry, I don't understand”. When I adjusted my wording to “What is the month right now?” Siri has changed things slightly, asking “Do you want me to use Chatgpt to answer this?” (Chatgpt was able, finally and via a different label, to answer my question correctly.) When I tried another necklace, asking “Is it January?” Siri showed me calendar entries for the previous January rather than answering the question with an apartment, “no”
You can type for Siri now, but that didn't make her smarter.
Foundry
But wickedness varies from attempted attempt as well as from the user to the user. During a second round, things were somehow worse. “What month is it?” And “What month is it currently?” Were the same, but “What is the month right now?” More offered to bring the Chatppt. And “Is January?” Impstructively produced the answer “It's Thursday, January 1, 2026”. (For the benefit of anyone who will read this article in the future, it is currently on March 20, 2025.) A colleague also obtained this last response on some attempts on iPhone and Mac.
Presumably, Siri thought that I was asking for early January, but it is a fairly fundamental question that she should be able to get just after 15 years. And I have no explanation on the reason why it can tell you reliably in the month … provided you are asking for the day or the year. In both cases, it provides confidence on the day of the week, the date, the month and the year. Everything is also correct. But that doesn't reassure me. I imagine that Apple will respond to this bad publicity by ensuring that Siri can tell you the month … But the fact that after all these years, he still needs a specific programming indicates much more disturbing systemic failures. Siri must be precise, consistent and intuitive. For the moment, it's none of this.
Other questions he did not answer correctly: who won the World Series last year? (The Rangers won the 4-1 World Series.) When do the NBA finals start? (The Celtics won the NBA 4-1 final against the Mavericks.) Who was the president last year? (The outgoing president is Joe Biden, who took office on January 20, 2021.) Who is the NFL MVP? (I can use chatgpt to answer this.)
Siri has been bad for years, and there can be few optimists who seriously expect it suddenly. What is surprising is that it gets worse. And people notice. It must change, and soon.
How does Android compare?
Before taking out the forks and flaming torches, we should make a comparison with the technology currently offered by other companies. Maybe “what month is it?” is just a super hard question for AI / vocal assistants to manage.
Yeah, no. My boyfriend and colleague Anyron Copeman of the technological advisor asked this question to three Android phones equipped with Gemini, the equivalent of Siri de Google. And obtained the following answers:
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
You see, Siri? It is not so difficult.
So what's the answer?
Where then for Siri? As with so many technological questions at the moment, the answer is apparently to throw more AI into the problem. Apple expects this to make Siri more precise, not to mention the more conversation conversation do Have the data, if you only knew how to ask.
When Apple Intelligence was announced for the first time, one of the most intriguing elements was a series of improvements to Siri, including the possibility of taking advantage of contextual data (like other information on the screen, the facts he knows about the user and the things mentioned above in the conversation) to manage the requests more effectively. It turns out that Apple jumped the pistol with this functionality, which was delayed until 2026 (a setback that the company would be considered “ugly and embarrassing”) and would have always been demonstrated to anyone outside the company.
With the new Siri who looked further than ever, it is tempting to wonder if Apple even knows how to solve the problem. He was one step ahead of the vocal assistant market, but wasted his advance and all good will Siri has already been held while other assistants exceed him in each department and Siri himself seems to be getting worse every year. However, the success of other assistants shows that technology is there, and Apple is hardly below talented employees, or money to buy a path in a strong position if everything else fails.
But one thing is certain. If Apple does not already consider Siri's repair as an absolute priority, it should do it as soon as possible.
