← Front page

The Vergecast · Friday, July 17, 2026

Apple's Approach to New AI Features: High Ceiling, Lower Floor?

The discussion highlights a potential trade-off in Apple's new Siri AI, where advanced capabilities are emerging, but foundational functionalities may be degrading. This shift might be a consequence of integrating complex LLM-based systems.

personDavid PiercepersonNilay PatelcompanyApple

The tape

3 quotes
It is noticeably worse than it was in the past? Because, and we've talked about this many times, right? Like it used to be all of these systems were essentially a series of really elaborate if-then statements. And they didn't work for anything except the things that they worked for. But the things that they worked for, they worked for. And so you you learn to understand the boundaries of the thing. And if all I needed to do is turn on my lights, it would turn on my lights. It wouldn't do anything else. But it would turn on my lights. And I think we're we're doing a little bit of throwing that stuff out in order to do more complicated stuff with Siri also.
Nilay Patel
The ceiling is higher if you issue the right incantation at the right time and the system understands it in the right way.
Nilay Patel
And then if you don't. It's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
David Pierce
Heard on The Vergecast — “Apple's plot to crush OpenAI, published Friday, July 17, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via Gemini audio transcription · $0.08
Apple's Approach to New AI Features: High Ceiling, Lower Floor? — Heardvine