Siri AI – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Siri AI and The Spam Call Problem

Put AI to work banishing spam

Listening to podcasts after each WWDC is always a bit of information overload, but occasionally you catch a bit of analysis that seems perhaps pertinent.

One of the podcasts I listen to his John Gruber’s Talk Show Live event that he’s been hosting for a few years now. After his infamous Something Is Wrong In The State of Cupertino post last year, Apple execs stayed away after having been guests in years previous. They stayed away this year as well.

This year, like last, Gruber put together a panel that featured The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, now with her own gig, New Things With Joanna Stern. This year and last offered excellent commentary by both, and given the wait and see cynical posture I’ve adopted for all of Apple’s upcoming offerings, worth a listen.

One interesting tidbit stood out that I want to highlight in the context of my ongoing complaints and requests to Apple about making the handling of spam and unwanted phone calls easier.

Joanna seemed to be quite impressed with what she’s seen of Siri AI in the early going, citing a number of examples that she tried out during the event. The one that stood out to me is this:

I said, “What could I do that’s fun near the California Theater? I have some time to to kill,” and I don’t know if… I don’t know exactly what was the prompt or what was the thing, but it started suggesting things I could do locally. But also, it had access to my voicemail, so it knew that I had just gotten a message from my uncle who asked me to speak at his book club, and it said, “You… you could get back to my your uncle about his book club engagement, you would have some time to do that.” Okay, that’s crazy. It really is, right? And but what if that was sensitive information, right?

The key is Siri AI having access to voice mail. Regardless of however you feel about what data and info Siri AI needs to have about you to develop “Personal Context,” if Siri AI has access to your voice mail it seems it should be a relatively easy technological hop, skip, and jump to just automatically delete the flood of spam calls that have already figured out ways around any of the current wack-a-mole tricks that are being used.

Obviously the larger point Joanna makes about “Personal Context” and a new level of trust is spot on. It is one many iPhone users will have to reckon with. But I’ll tell you this. For my own personal context, if Siri AI can automatically banish to digital hell all of the fake calls that now use names to try and circumvent current spam call prevention I’ll be grateful.

The only reasons I can think of for Siri AI (or Google’s Gemini on Android phones) are business reasons and relationships with the mobile carriers. Apple’s “Personal Context” or Google’s “Personal Intelligence” are the names of the game, or so they claim. It seems logical to me that the technology exists to eradicate more of this curse that same technology makes possible and we all are prey to, whether it be phone calls, emails, or texts.

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The Siri AI Demo Apple Should Have Done

One day perhaps we’ll move beyond AI cliché demos.

My nephew occasionally takes a look at this blog and gives me feedback on what I think and write. Actually, he mostly gives me shit. He certainly does when I write about Artificial Intelligence. He often asks why I’m so “down” on AI. At least we agree on politics.

Apple Executive Mike Rockwell demos Siri AI at WWDC 2026

I keep reminding him that I’m not “down” on the technology per se. I’d love to see the press release announcing AI led to a a cure for cancer. Who wouldn’t? I’m down on the way it continues to be sold to us and the ramifications that brings on so many levels, while still feeling like it’s not what the sellers keep promising. (I also remind him to read what I write more carefully, but he’s probably using some AI to summarize what I write.)

In truth, that’s the essence of my skeptical reaction to what we know as AI at the moment. There’s a lot going on, but how it’s being sold to most consumers still feels like it will ultimately be no more, no less than just another tool we use on a computer, after exacting high costs to do so, and dumbing down the general learning curve in the bargain.

Take for example the demos we constantly see about what AI can do when each company rolls out its latest version. As demos they all look slick as far as party and trip planning go.

(Coding is another case entirely. I’m not talking about that here, simply because I don’t have the expertise to do so. I’m strictly speaking of the sell to consumers.)

Even Apple fell back on these examples that have become clichés in this year’s WWDC 2026 announcement. Those clichés define the market companies think are ripe for the come on and then the plucking. I’m guessing they also define the current limitations of the technology. Or at least the limitations companies don’t want to risk pushing beyond in a live demo.

Here’s the AI Siri demo I wish Apple had shown us yesterday.

If you watched Apple’s keynote presentation you might remember this slide.

Maybe not. It flew by pretty quickly. It’s a word cloud of all of the other non Siri AI improvements Apple is bringing to its various operating systems this year.

Yes, the print is that tiny and crammed together. To call it unreadable is accurate. For those who didn’t watch the demo, the length of time it was on our screens was equally tiny, certainly compared to all the travel time each presenter took to walk on and hit their mark prior to speaking. To be honest, the slide’s quick and unreadable inclusion felt insulting given the long list of improvements it’s touting.

(To my knowledge no such list appears yet in Apple’s Newsroom or on its website heralding the other announcements. If I’m wrong, point me to it and I’ll link to it here. I’m sure it won’t be long before one of the sites that covers Apple distills it down and publishes it. Probably using AI.)

(UPDATE: Right after hitting publish, I noticed that John Gruber linked to this post on the Oneberri Blog listing all of those improvements.)

What if Mike Rockwell, the Apple Executive who did the Siri AI demos, had asked Siri AI to take that slide, and present the info into a bulleted list in Apple Notes, and then prepare a PDF for distribution? In the post keynote tech talk he and other Apple execs participated in, he could have followed that up by asking Siri AI to distribute the PDF to the other Apple execs on stage. Essentially it would have demonstrated the same Siri AI capability to gather info across native Apple apps, using context, in the same way the clichéd party planning demos do.

It certainly would have been more impressive than the usual clichés.

Perhaps AI Siri and the apps needed to do that work aren’t ready for such a challenge just yet. Things are still in beta after all. Perhaps it’s just too risky to stray outside of what’s made these kinds of demos a laughable cliché. Perhaps we’ll get there someday. Who knows?

Meanwhile I’ll remain “down” on AI the way my nephew likes to give me shit about my AI skepticism. I hope one day this technology might indeed lead to a cure for cancer. I also hope my nephew keeps reading this blog. It might help him learn to think for himself more often. 😉

Apple Announces New OS’s. I’m Still In Wait And See Mode

Apple works to make good on Apple Intelligence with Siri AI

At WWDC 26 Apple today announced new operating systems all ending in OS27. (The numbering thing drives me nuts.) The entire keynote felt different to me from recent years. I’m not talking about the presentation organization that strayed from the usual by device format. Rather it felt like Apple felt a bit humbled. Almost as if Apple is in a we’re in a thinking different mode these days. I may be reading more into that than is real, but I’m usually pretty good at sniffing these things out.

Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence.jpg.

Apple chose the name Golden Gate for its macOS 27 version this year, and it looks like the folks in Cupertino heard the criticisms about Liquid Glass and have taken some steps to correct what I and many other consider design flaws. I’ve seen as many negative as positive reactions to the design changes, so we’ll see how that goes throughout the summer.

There was also quite a bit of time devoted to Parental Controls. Given the political heat big tech in general is taking politically here in the US and elsewhere that’s probably a smart move. The announcement stirred up a bit of controversy from folks not in favor of efforts like age verification. The devil will be in the details.

The big push though is all about Apple Intelligence and the New Siri, now called Siri AI. Trying to play catch up and recover from the mistakes of two years ago, Apple showed off some live demos in a separate meeting from the keynote. You can read about that on The Verge. So you have to consider showing live demos a plus over two years ago, although it was still in a protected environment. I’ll be looking for users to do the same as the betas roll out, even if it appears that there’s a waiting list for the New Siri. So, we’ll see how that goes.

Note that Siri AI, announced to roll out this fall, will be delayed in the European Union and China.

The announcements were solid. They appeared to address past problems of Apple’s own making, user complaints about recent design changes, and the promise of under the hood bug busting. Announcing speed increases across the platforms is promising. But we’ve been here before. Every keynote from every company makes promises. The devil is always in the details, and when life is a beta, you never know what’s final and when. Especially when you’re in a mode of trying to rebuild trust.

You can check out the entire keynote reduced to 26 minutes, also from The Verge here. And Jonny Evans has a nice collection of the headline announcements from the keynote here.

And this Mastodon post from Dwight Silverman sums up my some of my early thoughts as well.

To further sum it up my early thoughts, I’ll just say this. It’s going to be an interesting summer watching folks hammer on the betas, the first of what was released to developers today. The public betas will roll out in July. But we’ll have some early indications later in the week as developers begin working with the betas.

So, I’m still in wait and see mode. As should most of us be.