Upate: Partnership on AI has now confirmed that Apple has joined.

A tech industry body established to agree best practice in the use of artificial intelligence had one notable omission in the impressive list of member companies. IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon all signed up, but Apple didn’t.

The Partnership on AI was formed in September, with part of its brief to make recommendations in the areas of ethics, fairness, inclusivity, privacy and trustworthiness – all values you might expect Apple to fully endorse. But while the company didn’t sign up at the time, it appears this is about to change …

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Apple’s rumored Siri Speaker may be hitting the market this year and with it will likely come improvements to Siri itself. Apple, however, won’t be the first to release a standalone speaker with a built-in virtual assistant. Google has already released its solution, Google Home, while Amazon has its Alexa virtual assistant available in several forms, including the Echo and Echo Dot.

The Echo Dot and the Echo series as a whole has been a smash hit success for Amazon and it’s where Apple should take inspiration from for its Siri Speaker, but its success really hinges upon implements to Siri itself…

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There has been speculation that Apple may be planning to build its own home speaker device to compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home, with some expressing the view that Apple is already late to the party.

But does Apple need to compete in this space, when it arguably already has its own version of Echo or Home? The one that’s either on your wrist or in your pocket …

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Researchers from several U.S. universities say that Siri has improved its responses to medical emergencies and personal crises since last year, but that more work is needed.

A Stanford study carried out a year ago found that intelligent assistants like Siri, Cortana and Samsung’s S Voice often failed to recognize when someone needed help, and would sometimes respond with flippant remarks or merely offer a web search when someone made a statement like ‘I am depressed.’ The lead author of that study, Stanford clinical psychologist Adam Miner, says that he has seen improvements since then …

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A few days after having received my AirPods order, I’ve quickly come to realize how the lack of accessible audio playback controls can hinder the overall experience. In my previous reviews of true wireless earbuds, I’ve consistently brought up on-device controls as a positive or a negative. When you remove the wire and the controls so many of us have gotten used to, offering a new means of control is necessary.

With the AirPods, the main and only means of audio playback control is by double-tapping above the AirPods’ stem. Based on your settings this either activates Siri, allowing you to speak all of the basic playback commands, or controls play/pause for audio. Double-tapping and only being able to play/pause controls aren’t enough for daily usage, but relying on Siri, especially when internet connections are weaker, makes for a cumbersome experience at best. These issues highlight the need for Apple to introduce an offline mode for Siri.

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