Once a gold standard for digital assistants, Siri has long been more akin to a digital punchline. The latest spectacle is Siri’s inability to identify the current month. On Reddit, a thread cheerfully noted how Siri said “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” when asked the tricky question of what month it was.
This followed a blunder unearthed by MacStories founder Federico Viticci where Siri bungled time zone calculations. As Viticci noted, ChatGPT did not. And nor did Google Gemini, Perplexity, Soulver, or even the iPhone’s own Clock app.
Such flubs feel less like a glitch and more a symptom of bigger problems. These aren’t queries with room for interpretation – they’re not deep philosophical questions. They’re basic information retrieval. And people increasingly rely on technology to feed them said information, with a reasonable assumption that the technology works and that the answers they get will be accurate. These two examples of Siri failings feel like a lack of seriousness on the part of Apple.
Long-time Apple users will of course be aware Siri’s shortcomings are nothing new. Despite launching with plenty of promise (see the announcement video above), Siri has long felt rigid and lacking compared to rivals. Even a first-generation Amazon Echo has long been able to helpfully feed trivia answers from the web. But even the most recent HomePod often merely sends search results to your phone. Not ideal for a voice-based interface.
However, the stakes are higher of late. Apple exists in a tech landscape increasingly dominated by superior digital assistants. And individuals are rapidly discovering the trade-offs companies are willing to make. One of those is your privacy. Just recently, Amazon announced it would ditch the ‘do not send voice recordings’ feature on Echo devices. Disagree and Amazon’s AI-driven assistant falls silent. By contrast, Apple remains a staunch guardian of user privacy.
This leaves Apple in a bind. It must reconcile its commitment to privacy with the need to deliver a competitive digital assistant experience. It must figure out how to best maintain a privacy-first stance and close the widening gap with its rivals when evolving Siri and Apple Intelligence.
Accuracy. Finally. (Well, almost.)
There are glimmers of hope. The time zone issue has been fixed. And since the original Reddit thread went up, Apple apparently made some changes. When I asked about the current month in late March, Siri said: “It was Saturday, March 1 2025”. An odd construction, and not a precise answer to my specific question. But better than nothing. At the time of writing, Siri had shifted again, answering the question with today’s date in full. Again, not quite what I asked, but an improvement on Siri saying it doesn’t understand at all.
However, incremental and reactive improvements to specific issues aren’t going to cut it. Siri needs an overhaul. Apple must address the core deficiencies that are holding back its once-revolutionary assistant. Because although the future of AI is uncertain, we know one thing for sure: it is unforgiving. Apple cannot afford to let Siri’s decline become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Siri needs to once again find its voice – and to quickly and accurately help you find what you need, rather than serve up apologies while rival services continue to blaze ahead.