Siri, not a companion, by design.

An Office Hours question asked by Bob V., September 11, 2026.

Q: When wrong answers came from ChatGPT under the original integration, Apple could say it was ChatGPT's problem. Now AI is integrated into the OS itself. Does that change the risk for Apple?

I suppose. But then again, people have gotten used to AIs being wrong. There have been improvements in performance and quality, but there's an acceptance that the nature of AI is that it's not deterministic, and usually you get a disclaimer saying answers may be wrong. I don't think there's that much brand risk, as long as the experience is as expected. Of course, Siri also had its problems, but it wasn't usually being wrong. It was not understanding, or not getting the question right.

Where it gets dangerous is if you're using these technologies to make decisions that are life-threatening, or if it gives you bad advice, as we see with chat AIs, where people become psychotic as a result of using them. I got a briefing on this from the product manager of Apple Intelligence, and she said: we're building Siri not to be a companion. It was a very big deal. It's an advisor, but not a companion. Siri is there as a concierge, a professional persona. It is not an amiable person, because they want to maintain an emotional distance. That was by design.

It's interesting they made that decision, because it would have been very attractive to create a companion Siri. Years ago, when Siri first came out, Big Bang Theory put Siri as a character in one of the shows: the nerdy characters became emotionally involved with Siri, and it was a cause for comedy. That was more than ten years ago, and I think since then Apple has become very aware of the pitfalls. They're probably conscious of the hallucinations and being careful with that. But the main focus is not on error prevention. It's on preventing violations of privacy or security. It's far more scandalous if they're accused of some sort of leak of information. They'd get sued right away. There was a recent lawsuit claiming a privacy fault, where the exposure came from their own claim. This gets very tricky: regulatory concern, legal liabilities, class actions of all kinds. Managing all that risk is part of the cost of doing business.

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