Current incoming call interfaces are relatively limited, providing basic options to answer or reject the call. For important contacts or family members, there is sometimes a need to advise the caller why the call cannot be answered, usually by text messages, but at the same time the recipient may not be in a position to write a custom message out in the first place, let alone sending a default unavailable response.
An Apple patent application published on Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “Intelligent Digital Assistant for Declining an Incoming Call” aims to fix the problem by having Siri or another digital assistant automatically work out why the call cannot be accepted.
