Apple’s Siri: Stunning Looks, No Chat Skills Since 2011

KEY POINTS

•Babak Hodjat co-invented the technology behind Siri in the late 1990s at Dejima, Japan.
•Apple acquired Siri in 2011 but focused more on its appearance than improving user interactions, Hodjat said.
•The voice-only approach made many users uncomfortable talking to their phones, according to Hodjat.
•Apple recently delayed a Siri overhaul and plans to use Google's Gemini AI to upgrade the assistant.

Babak Hodjat, the kindly forgotten wizard behind early Siri tech, scoffs as Apple obsesses over Siri's Hollywood makeup, ignoring the script. Invented in the late '90s by a nerd squad from Japan’s Kyushu University via Dejima and sandwiched in a US gov-funded CALO project, Siri finally stumbled onto iPhones in 2011—without Hodjat’s blessing. He claims Apple’s fixation on Siri’s 'look and feel' strangled its chatty potential while forcing us all to awkwardly whisper to our phones like they're our nosy exes. Even Apple's 'type to Siri' tweak in 2024 arrived fashionably late. The cherry? Apple’s now outsourcing Siri’s brain to Google’s Gemini, like a college student borrowing notes last minute. Hodjat calls Apple’s wavering plans a classic case of indecisive glitter over guts.