Yesterday was October 1st, and I think it was the day Apple launched their new AI-powered automated phone system (for when customers call in for support).
AppleCare phone callers have been greeted by an automated phone triage voice-response system for quite a while now. But it’s been as dumb as dirt (apologies to the fertile soil used to lovingly grow our food ;-).
The new AI “Support assistant” is head and shoulders above the old one. It’s got a smart-sounding, friendly female voice and was able to understand the rather involved description I narrated about the problem I encountered trying to disable Find My on my Mac. Instead of keying in on just one term I had mentioned and offering a completely useless suggestion, “she” mirrored a synopsis back to me and then acknowledged that a (human) support agent was needed. She then promptly transferred me to one.
Even better, somehow the agent seemed to be a 2nd-level agent, as he was able to fully grasp the problem and immediately launched into a non-obvious series of steps where I worked with him to skirt and ultimately solve the problem. All-in-all, a most pleasant surprise (especially given I’ve deliberately kept Siri AI disabled on the new OS 27 installs after hearing all the complaints about it).
The only downside of the new support assistant, and a trivially small one at that, was that her vocal tone sounded disappointed when I declined her suggestion to get their survey questionnaire via text (I asked for email instead). I found that quite amusing.