Apple is taking Siri offline
Apple makes a big deal about being at the forefront of privacy protection online. So it’s surprising that, for all these years, Siri has required an Internet connection to work. It processes all your requests online, even for things that have no online component like setting timers. So much as utter, “Hey Siri” when not connected to the Internet and you’ll get the opposite screen shot. With iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, that’s finally changing. Siri will gain a new on-device speech recognition model on all devices with an A12 Bionic processor or later (that’s an iPhone XS/XR or later). That’s a huge boon to the privacy-conscious, as it means your recorded voice is never, intentionally or unintentionally, leaving your device. Apple has confirmed that offline Siri access will not be…