Tim Cook: Siri has “unbelievable potential”, expect new features in the coming months

Tim Cook has revealed that Apple will launch a set of new features for Siri “in the coming months”, as it looks to build on the “unbelievable potential” that the virtual personal assistant has.

Cook teased an audience at the All Things D conference by revealing that Siri users can expect “cool” new things very soon:

It’s one of the most popular features of our most popular phone. But there’s more that it can do. And we have a lot of people working on this. And I think you’ll be really pleased with some of the things that you’ll see in the coming months, where the breadth that you’re talking about… we’ve got some cool ideas about what Siri can do. And so we have a lot going on on this.

Siri remains in beta, allowing Apple to make regular tweaks and changes to it, and Cook explained that he believes that the company is just scratching the surface of what the voice-activated service can do, now that it has “moved into the mainstream”.

The service is recognisable to people already, they hear the word and “know what you’re talking about”, Cook says, and he believes that Apple is fulfilling the aspirations of a user experience that many have wanted for some time.

“This is something that people dreamed of for years,” Cook said,” and it’s here. and it’s here. It’s really here. Now yes, it can be broader, and so forth, but we see unbelievable potential here.”

Explaining that its challenges go beyond simply voice recognition, Cook told interviewers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher that the focus is on better intelligence to understand what users want or are searching for, rather than simply improving the listening.

Apple added Japanese language support for Siri when it delivered iOS 5.1 in March.

Hat tip Macworld for its live blog coverage