this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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IME in the past few months the swiping word-predictions have gotten markedly worse — it makes me wonder if there’s more “phoning home” going on (input data being sent back) or perhaps AI analysis being crammed in. I have no verification on this though.
So many features like this have gotten so much worse over the years. Google assistant is the big stand out one for me. I first switched to Android in 2014ish, and I got heavily into tinkering and automating stuff. I could say "Okay Google, make a coffee", or "pop a coffee on please", and Google assistant would hear this, parse it and understand that this wasn't a command it knew. This would lead to that input being passed over to Tasker, the app I used for automating stuff, and that would then do the behind the scenes magic of turning on the coffee brewer as I was on my way home (It was very funny, because I didn't have a fancy smart coffee pot or anything — I just used a ball bearing on a track to hit the on button)
Nowadays, I say something simple like "Okay Google, make a note" and it will say "I'm sorry, I don't understand that" more often than not. The speech recognition used to be so good, especially after training it on your voice for a while. Now it's just shit.
It makes me disproportionately sad. Like, enshittification is everywhere, but this is something distinct, even if it is linked to enshittification. If they were gating better voice recognition behind paywalls, I'd be annoyed, but much less sad, because at least that functionality still exists. Modern software, especially that produced by the tech giants, has gotten so complex that I wonder whether even the most proficient engineers in Google understand their software nowadays.
I remember it being cold, gloves on, phone in the bag, I forgot to navigate with maps via public transport. No bother, earphones are in, I can summon Google assistant or so I thought I tried asking for navigation and instead Gemini showed up and started trying to give me directions that it was hallucinating on the spot
Why did the predictions get so bad? SwiftKey used to be amazing until Microshits got their dirty hands on it. I mean, it's to be expected, but I'd like a more technical breakdown.
I’ve always had that shit disabled. It never really worked well for me. I have all predicative crap turned off besides basic auto correct.