Why haven’t Apple taken a look at the data then hardcoded handlers for the top ~1000 usages???
Build your own Siri locally and on-device
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#22This is great, thanks for putting this together. Haven't followed it through yet, but does this model run successfully on an iPhone? My 9 year old ran a Qwen 0.6B model using ollama quite well, anything else was too slow to offer a good UX.
Oh, a nine year old PHONE. I was thinking there was a fourth grader out there deploying models when at that age I was still learning multiplication tables.
My son just turned 9 today so I was like, "Wow! I wonder if my kid would be interested in doing this?"
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#23Does Apple even allow you to replace Siri with another assistant? For the longest time on android, all non-Google assistants were crippled by not being able to listen in the background or use the assistant hardkey, gestures, or shortcuts. I'm not sure if the Google assistant still has privileges others don't, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
Part of the problem is the wake word “hey siri” is actually handed by a separate coprocessor (AOP) with the model compiled into the firmware. While anything is technically possible, it isn’t as simple as just letting the google app run in the background since the AP is asleep when any of these gesture happen. You could probably setup the action button on the side to open an assistant, but that’s going to be a less pl…
Same with android phones - a super-specific hardcoded phrase is much easier to work in the power budgets required for an "always on" part of the device.
It's why a manufacturer (like Samsung) can change that sort of thing on their devices, but it's not realistically something an end user (or even an app) can customize in software. It's not some "arbitrary" limitation.
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#24Does Apple even allow you to replace Siri with another assistant? For the longest time on android, all non-Google assistants were crippled by not being able to listen in the background or use the assistant hardkey, gestures, or shortcuts. I'm not sure if the Google assistant still has privileges others don't, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
More or less. This is what Perplexity does.
I saw an article about this and downloaded the Perplexity app but I was unable to figure out if this was true? Do I need a paid tier? I just quickly worked through the free sign up and couldn't sort it out. The demo looked really slick. Is it worth pursuing?
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#25Does Apple even allow you to replace Siri with another assistant? For the longest time on android, all non-Google assistants were crippled by not being able to listen in the background or use the assistant hardkey, gestures, or shortcuts. I'm not sure if the Google assistant still has privileges others don't, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
Part of the problem is the wake word “hey siri” is actually handed by a separate coprocessor (AOP) with the model compiled into the firmware. While anything is technically possible, it isn’t as simple as just letting the google app run in the background since the AP is asleep when any of these gesture happen. You could probably setup the action button on the side to open an assistant, but that’s going to be a less pl…
I think people would be fine with having to call it Siri if only they could replace the actual assistant.
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#26Does Apple even allow you to replace Siri with another assistant? For the longest time on android, all non-Google assistants were crippled by not being able to listen in the background or use the assistant hardkey, gestures, or shortcuts. I'm not sure if the Google assistant still has privileges others don't, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
I presume you could pretty easily use new-ish action button to run a custom shortcut that brings up an alternative assistant app.
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#27I love the idea and I would like to build something like this. But the few attempts i have made using whisper locally has so far been underwhelming. Has anyone gotten results with small whisper models that are good enough for a use case like this? Maybe I've just had a bad microphone.
> Maybe I've just had a bad microphone.
Yeah, I would definitely double-check your setup. At work we use Whisper to live-transcribe-and-translate all-hands meetings and it works exceptionally well.
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#28I love the idea and I would like to build something like this. But the few attempts i have made using whisper locally has so far been underwhelming. Has anyone gotten results with small whisper models that are good enough for a use case like this? Maybe I've just had a bad microphone.
> Maybe I've just had a bad microphone. Yeah, I would definitely double-check your setup. At work we use Whisper to live-transcribe-and-translate all-hands meetings and it works exceptionally well.
+1 this. Whisper works insanely well. I've been using the medium model as it has yet to mis transcribe anything noticeable, and it's very lightweight. I even converted it to a coreML model so it runs accelerated on apple silicon. It doesn't run *that* much faster than before.. but it ran really fast to begin with. For anyone tinkering, ive had much success with whisper.cpp.
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#29Why haven’t Apple taken a look at the data then hardcoded handlers for the top ~1000 usages???
They are doing this, just at a mind-numbingly slow pace. They seem to add controls for brightness and power but don't make it clear what works when offline. It's not even worth trying because there's no guide or documentation on what commands would be available. You just have to go into airplane mode and try asking stuff. Awful UX
Re: Build your own Siri locally and on-device
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crappy? Dude, Siri at one point couldn't even tell you what today's date was. The bar is on the ground.
I do not know if it is because I have been trained to make simple requests, but there are only a half dozen things I would verbally ask a robot. - time of day - calendar date - weather - set a timer - simple math calculation That’s 90% of the functionality right there.
I'm sorry, something went wrong with your "what time is it" request.
Oh you asked "what time is it in Miami?" Because I already cut you off after "what time is it".
This happens on a daily basis when I'm not talking right into my phone.