Apple to change its voice assistant trigger phrase 'Hey Siri' to 'Siri'

A new report suggests that US tech giant Apple plans to change Siri's trigger phrase from 'Hey Siri' to just 'Siri'. According to The Verge, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that this change would mean that users would only have to say 'Siri' followed by a command to activate the smart assistant.

Gurman noted that Apple has been working on this feature for the past few months and is expected to release it next year or 2024. The shorter wake phrase isn't the only change to expect from Siri; According to Gurman, Apple can also integrate Siri into third-party apps and services and increase its ability to understand and process user requests.

However, for the functionality to work effectively, Apple would need to invest a "significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work" as the smart assistant will need to understand the single wake word in numerous accents and dialects.

The current two-word trigger phrase, "Hey Siri," increases the chances Siri will notice. The Verge reported that switching to a single trigger phrase could help Siri compete with Amazon's Alexa, allowing users to wake the smart assistant with "Alexa" instead of "Hey Alexa."

It would also put Siri ahead of Google Assistant, which requires the phrases' Ok Google' or 'Hey Google' to wake up, though users don't have to repeat the wake word when saying consecutive requests. Before shutting down its voice assistant last year, even Microsoft had switched from 'Hey Cortana' to 'Cortana' on smart speakers.