Why Siri never worked like ChatGPT — former Siri AI researcher explains what Apple had to change
Former Siri AI researcher Nikola Mrkšić explains that Apple's assistant struggled with natural conversation because it was built for an earlier era of AI technology. The original system relied on pre-mapped conversation paths rather than adaptive language models, causing it to fail when users deviated from expected scripts. This fundamental architectural difference accounts for the gap between Siri's historical performance and the fluid interactions seen in modern tools like ChatGPT.
- ▪Nikola Mrkšić, a former Siri AI researcher and current CEO of PolyAI, identified the root cause of Siri's conversational limitations.
- ▪The original Siri architecture required engineers to manually map out every possible conversation path in advance.
- ▪Users who deviated from these pre-defined scripts would cause the system to get stuck or fail to respond correctly.
- ▪This rigid approach contrasts with modern AI models that can dynamically interpret and respond to open-ended user queries.
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| Original publisher | Tom's Guide |
| Canonical URL | https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/why-siri-never-worked-like-chatgpt-former-siri-ai-researcher-explains-what-apple-had-to-change |
| Publication time | Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:15:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-30T08:21:55.682Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-30T08:21:55.682Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | rECo5GLlD3tx · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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AI Why Siri never worked like ChatGPT — former Siri AI researcher explains what Apple had to change Features By Amanda Caswell Published 30 September 2026 Siri was built for a very different AI era When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Future) Copy link Facebook X Reddit Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter If you've ever asked Siri AI a follow-up question only to have it seemingly forget what you were talking about, the problem wasn't necessarily that Siri couldn't hear you.It was that the assistant was built for a very different era of AI.That's according to Nikola Mrkšić, CEO and co-founder of conversational…
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