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Apple's voice assistant may soon be called by just 'Siri' than 'Hey Siri'
Apple has also recently made a few minor changes to the voice assistant, including the addition of a new voice recorded by a member of the LGBTQ community and a new Siri activation sound.
Apple is considering changing Siri's trigger phrase from "Hey Siri" to simply "Siri". According to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, as a result of this change, users would only need to say "Siri" followed by a command to activate the virtual assistant.
Gurman stated that Apple has been working on this feature for a long time and anticipates releasing it either in 2023 or 2024.
However, given that the intelligent assistant will need to be able to understand the single wake word in a variety of accents and dialects, Apple will need to spend a "substantial amount of AI training and underlying engineering development" in order for the functionality to perform as intended.
The present two-word trigger phrase, "Hey Siri," makes Siri more likely to recognise it.
In order to compete with Amazon's Alexa, which already allows users to activate the smart assistant with 'Alexa' rather than 'Hey Alexa', the transitioning to a single wake phrase would benefit the company.
Additionally, it would put Siri ahead of Google Assistant, which can be activated by saying "Ok Google" or "Hey Google," although users do not need to repeat the wake word while speaking consecutive commands.
Even Microsoft changed the name of Cortana on smart speakers from "Hey Cortana" to "Cortana" before discontinuing its voice assistant last year.
Gurman claims that Apple may also integrate Siri into third-party apps and services and improve its capacity to understand and handle user requests in addition to the shortened trigger phrase.
Apple has also recently made a few minor changes to the voice assistant, including the addition of a new voice recorded by a member of the LGBTQ community and a new Siri activation sound.
(Inputs from ANI)
