Siri Really Doesn't Work Very Well

[wa2be]

I've long been a fan of using Siri for basic functions like setting reminders, playing music and sending texts. I've noticed over the span of the last 6 months or so that Siri has gotten progressively "dumber" in terms of understanding what I'm asking it to do.

Last week I asked Siri to send a text to "my wife", which I have done dozens of time in the past without issue (I told Siri which person in my contact list was "my wife" and it's always understood what that meant). On this particular occasion it had no idea what I was talking about and told me there was no such person in my contact list. I then restated the request by telling Siri to send the text message to my wife's actual name. Siri was able to figure this command out, but for some unknown reason it also sent the text to a random person from my contact list that doesn't have a name that's even similar to my wife's. I had to send a new text to that guy apologizing for sending him a message that wasn't meant for him.

And then yesterday, I asked Siri to play artist "Needtobreathe". I have a couple albums from this band downloaded to my phone music library and Siri has always understood this command without problems. Yesterday, Siri told me that it couldn't find artist "Need To Breathe" (note the insertion of spaces between the words). So instead I asked Siri to play one of their albums by name, and it found the album and displayed the message "Playing Hardlove by Needtobreathe". So why couldn't it find "Needtobreathe" as the artist name when I asked it to?

I'm at a point now that I'm only using Siri for creating reminders as it hasn't failed me on that so far. It's really not functional for anything beyond that in my recent experience.

Anyone else noticing the Siri seems to have no idea what's being asked of it most of the time?

 

[KeepCalmPeople]

Yup - you, me and thousands of others have found Siri to misunderstand things, and randomly forget how to respond to requests that it has successfully responded to in the past.
I will say that Siri is generally better on my phone than my watch, which may mean it is related to the microphones. Generally though, just not very good.

 

[bodonnell202]

How could Siri possibly get any worse? I've never been able to reliably use Siri for anything, mostly because I've found basically every interaction I've tried with her (from trying to send a text to asking her to play a playlist) frustrating.

 

[decypher44]

I completely avoid using Siri. Period.

 

[dk001]

Chuckle - so true.
Asked her for the score from the Rams game yesterday. Gave me that and more.
Then asked for the score from the Giants game and she gave me some web pages.

Never know what you'll get.

 

[mngdew]

Since SJ's passing, Apple has dropped balls on many things. Siri was born 7 years ago, one year ahead of Google Now. Look at how advanced Google Now is.

 

[audirs5]

Siri keeps suggesting me my route home, every ****ing time I get in the car.. Yet, somehow, I go to the gym at the same time every day and it does not learn that command, nor does it learn to suggest the gym application.. lol.

 

[coolbreeze2]

Yes I agree. It appears Siri is developing Alzheimer's.

 

[bigboy29]

Well, I dunno. I have had exactly the opposite experience, actually. Siri has been flawless in my car since iOS 12 (Bluetooth or CarPlay, no difference) and since I got the Watch (S4) - I have sent numerous messages and WhatsApp messages using voice. It has completely changed my mind on talking to a device. I hated the idea of talking to my phone but for some reason, it really works for me on the watch so I do it often. Love it!

 

[dk001]

Well, I dunno. I have had exactly the opposite experience, actually. Siri has been flawless in my car since iOS 12 (Bluetooth or CarPlay, no difference) and since I got the Watch (S4) - I have sent numerous messages and WhatsApp messages using voice. It has completely changed my mind on talking to a device. I hated the idea of talking to my phone but for some reason, it really works for me on the watch so I do it often. Love it!

It is interesting how so many can have so different results.
On my Razer I routinely use voice to do text, email, notes, searches, set alarms, etc... yet on my iPhone 8+, Siri demonstrates a much lower success rate.

 

[wa2be]

I discovered this morning that Siri no longer recognizes the shortcuts I setup in the Shortcuts app. I have a simple shortcut that is supposed to give me my travel time to work and start a playlist in my Overcast podcast app. This is activated by saying "Hey Siri, I'm going to work". It's worked great until today when I tried it and Siri said "I don't recognize that command". I tried a few of the other shortcuts I have setup and got the same result. I even tried re-recording the voice command for one of the shortcuts and Siri still didn't recognize that I was asking it to run a shortcut. So frustrating! I'm hesitant to restart my phone because every time I do that all of my custom text/reminder tones stop working and it takes several days to get them back. But, I may have to go down that road to see if it will make Siri start working again. Why can't Apple get this right?

 

[keithdoc]

Last week I asked Siri to send a text to "my wife", which I have done dozens of time in the past without issue.

Siri is a trifling B*%^& sometimes.

When I first got my iPhone, I was showing my father in law how "helpful" siri could be.
I said "Siri, call my wife".
Siri said, "Which wife?".

He was not impressed.

 

[Nikhil72]

For all the crap that google assistant is better, it’s great for trivia. meanwhile, on my pixel, “turn up the screen brightness” set my entire apartment lights to 100%, it has no idea how to play a less than specific request from spotify (i.e. play whitney Houston essentials and it plays a cover band) unless it’s via google play; i can keep going.

voice in general is not going to work flawlessly regardless of the assistant. don’t get me started on Alexa’s requirement for exact syntax for a proper result. meanwhile, homepod still hears 10x better than the others (google hub, alexa which i have).

tldr; siri has rough edges; they all do.

 

[Five_Oh]

Agree.

I don't really expect Siri to do *everything*, but it would be nice if it could at least do the *same* thing reliably.

For instance, I can tell it to text my wife (by name), and 9 times out of 10, it will work. The 10th time? It will either ask which name I want (two people in my contacts with same first name), or even more maddening, which number from my wife's contact card!

How does it not do the same thing when it hears the same command? It's not an issue with it understanding what I am saying either, at least in the second example. It knows the contact I want, but only sometimes can't figure out to text her mobile number!

Crazy.

 

[dk001]

For all the crap that google assistant is better, it’s great for trivia. meanwhile, on my pixel, “turn up the screen brightness” set my entire apartment lights to 100%, it has no idea how to play a less than specific request from spotify (i.e. play whitney Houston essentials and it plays a cover band) unless it’s via google play; i can keep going.

voice in general is not going to work flawlessly regardless of the assistant. don’t get me started on Alexa’s requirement for exact syntax for a proper result. meanwhile, homepod still hears 10x better than the others (google hub, alexa which i have).

tldr; siri has rough edges; they all do.

Missing the point a bit - I can get GA to do a lot with Google stuff, Android stuff, and some with a bunch of other stuff. I cannot get Siri to do a lot with Apple/iOS stuff never mind other stuff.