Apple likely to remove ‘Hey Siri’ trigger command, just ‘Siri’ to do the work

Apple is reportedly planning to change the trigger phase of voice assistant Siri from ‘Hey Siri’ to just ‘Siri’. As per a report by The Verge, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that users will only need to say ‘Siri’ to activate Apple’s smart assistant. Gurman believes that Apple has been working on change for the last few months and it is expected that the new trigger command will be rolled out next year or in early 2024.

He also suggests that Apple may also need to invest a significant amount of artificial intelligence training and underlying engineering work as Siri will now need to learn a single trigger word in a number of accents and dialects. The two word trigger phrase ‘Hey Siri’ that is currently used by the assistant, increases the chances of Siri answering on it.

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The Verge suggests that after changing the trigger to a single word trigger phrase, Siri may directly stack against Amazon’s Alexa, which also uses a single wake word. This would also put Apple’s assistant ahead of Google Assistant that needs to be triggered by saying ‘Ok Google’ or ‘Hey Google’ phrases. To recall, even Microsoft moved from ‘Hey Cortana’ to ‘Cortana’ before shutting down the voice assistant.

Apart from shorter trigger phrases, Apple is also expected to integrate Siri into third-party apps and services. The Verge reveals that the tech giant made some small tweaks to the Siri voice assistant recently by adding a new voice recorded by an LGBTQ+ community member and introducing a new Siri activation sound.