Apple upgrades Siri to a ‘Proactive Assistant’ with new features

BY Evan Selleck

Published 8 Jun 2015

image Proactive Siri

Recently, a report suggested Siri was getting “proactive,” with a more Google Now-like experience to bring even more context to your scenarios.

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple officially unveiled the major overhaul to Siri, giving the digital personal assistant even more abilities to help its users. With “Proactive,” Siri will automatically handle some events without the user actually instigating it, including the ability to plug in headphones and get music up and running when you go out on a run.

On top of that, Siri will now automatically add events to a calendar based on invitations arrived, like through email, without the user having to go in and do it on their own. Plugging in headphones can bring up a recently played Playlist, or even an audiobook.

Siri is even more detailed in its search results as well. On stage, Apple showcased how asking Siri, “Show me my pictures from WWDC June of last year,” and the photos appeared within the Photos app.

image Siri traffic notioce

Siri will also now prompt you when you need to leave for a meeting, based on traffic conditions.

Apple also noted that, privacy wise, the information that Proactive uses is on-device only, and will remain on the device with the user’s full control. And this information is not shared with third parties.

Developing