CUPERTINO, Calif. — The rebuilt version of Siri that Apple unveiled Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference has begun subcontracting every request it receives, according to developers testing the assistant, who said that a basic kitchen timer now passes through as many as four vendors before it starts and arrives with an itemized invoice.
Apple introduced the assistant, called Siri AI, during the conference’s June 8 keynote. The company said the new Siri is built on Google’s Gemini model, can be used in a standalone app that keeps a history of past conversations, and can handle several commands in a single request. Developers received access to it this week. A beta for the general public is expected later this year.
“I asked it to set a timer for pasta. It came back with a statement of work,” said Priya Sandoval, 31, an app developer in Sunnyvale, Calif., who received the update Monday afternoon. Sandoval said the assistant acknowledged the request, informed her that it would be “reaching out to a partner,” and returned 40 seconds later with a two-page document outlining the scope of the timer, its expected duration, and a clause stating that the pasta itself was “outside the scope of this engagement.”
According to logs shared with the Reporter by 11 developers, the timer request was passed from Siri to Gemini, from Gemini to what the logs describe as “a regional timer provider,” and from the provider to a fourth party identified only as “a guy.” The timer was delivered after 14 minutes, four minutes after the pasta was done, with an invoice for $0.00 itemized as $0.00 for the timer, $0.00 for project management, $0.00 for “coordination with stakeholders,” and a $0.00 late fee, which Sandoval said she had already incurred. A developer in Austin, Texas, who asked Siri to do three things at once, reported that the assistant formed a joint venture to handle the request, held an organizational meeting, and was still negotiating the vision statement at press time. When a third developer asked the assistant what time it was, Siri responded that it would need to “loop in the clock” and scheduled a 30-minute call for the following Thursday.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center has been tracking the number of companies involved in answering a single question since 2019, when the figure was 1.0. “As of Monday afternoon, the average is 3.74 companies per question and 6.12 companies per question about sports scores,” Teller said. “We believe that by 2028, the number of companies involved in setting a timer will exceed the number of minutes on the timer. Further study is needed.” The Center has applied for funding to continue the research and has been told the application was forwarded to a partner.
Developers said the assistant otherwise performed well. It correctly summarized emails, drafted messages, and, in one case, identified a houseplant from a photograph, though it noted that the identification had been provided by “our friends in the plant space” and asked the user to rate the plant on a scale of one to five.
Sandoval said she eventually set a timer by hand using the clock app, which has not yet been rebuilt. She said she received a follow-up message from Siri on Tuesday morning asking how the pasta had been, with a link to a brief survey and a reminder that her net-30 payment of $0.00 was due July 9.