Here’s a weird one. My son and I were discussing shapes on the drive to school earlier this week. His question for me was, “What is the name of the shape that looks like a square with uneven sides?”
I’m now in the habit of saying “ask ChatGPT” before any Siri request that isn’t taking an action like creating a reminder or sending a message. In this instance, though, I picked up my iPhone and pressed the Action button to open Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT. The results satisfied his curiosity.
A few days later, I decided to use his query as an example for how ChatGPT through Siri is useful. The results surprised me.
ChatGPT
First, I’ll show you the transcript from the ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode conversation. I’m not sure how it picked up “s***head” at the start, but in retrospect, I appreciate the pivot to sharks.
“Let me say it, let me say it,” was my son from the backseat. Cute. Voice-to-text incorrectly heard shape as sheep, but ChatGPT kept the conversation on topic. Not bad.
I tried again today in a more controlled environment, intentionally asking the question as it was posed by my son.
Great! ChatGPT answers the specific question with a satisfying response. No surprises. Then there’s ChatGPT through Siri…
ChatGPT using Siri
This is where things get weird. I’m a heavy ChatGPT user and a moderate Siri user, but the vast majority of my usage is with either ChatGPT or Siri. Using ChatGPT through Siri is a newer capability that can yield some unexpected results as we’ll see.
If you have a device with Apple Intelligence, try this one for yourself and see what happens. Here’s the command:
”Hey Siri, ask ChatGPT what is the name of the shape that looks like a square with uneven sides?”
The first time I tried it from the iPad, Siri asked if I wanted to send content from a Safari tab that wasn’t even in focus to ChatGPT. Uh, what? When asked from my iPhone, Siri consistently asks if I want to send a screenshot of my current view to ChatGPT.
This made no sense to me at first. The more I’ve thought about it, I think I know what the intention is at least. My best guess is that Siri interprets the question as asking about a shape that I’m viewing on my screen. Clever, but not correct.
Oh, Siri… So there’s that.
Siri
But before we fully dismiss Siri, let’s see what happens with the same query to Siri without using ChatGPT.
Wait, was rhomboid the answer we were looking for all along? All I know is that this exercise left me feeling more unsure about Siri with ChatGPT than ever, and I’m still not even sure I know the answer to my son’s question. A quick Google search has me more confident in rhombus, but trapezium also exists. I’m just glad he’s the one in second grade and not me.
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