Apple may drop 'Hey Siri' in favor of just 'Siri'

Apple is reportedly working on changing Siri’s trigger phrase from “Hey Siri” to just “Siri.” The tech giant has been working on it for several months, and it is expected to roll out the change next year or the year after if everything goes as planned. As noted by Mark Gurman, the change requires “a significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work.”

Apple wants to ensure that the “Siri” prompt works equally well in multiple different accents and dialects, even though it will have one less syllable to pick up the signal correctly. This will be one of the major complexities in implementing the change. While it will require some hard work from Apple engineers to develop the feature, competitors such as Amazon and Microsoft implemented similar changes way earlier than the Cupertino tech giant started working on it.

Back in 2018, Microsoft changed the trigger phrase “Hey Cortana” to just “Cortana.” Amazon did the exact same thing by dropping “Hey” in “Hey Alexa” for its smart devices. However, Apple’s effort is not limited to getting Siri to wake up to the “Siri” prompt. According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is also working to integrate its voice assistant deeper into third-party apps and services to ensure that Siri takes the correct course of action after being triggered.

Once these changes are live, all Apple devices where Siri is supported should be able to use the “Siri” prompt to wake the voice assistant. Apple’s latest effort in improving the Siri experience was some design changes to the interface here and there on Apple TV.

Do you use Siri on your Apple device? How would you like to wake it up? Share your thoughts in the comments section.