Siri’s AI Future in Doubt Following Internal Apple Meeting
Apple’s progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been under scrutiny in recent weeks, and a recent internal meeting has only heightened concerns. According to a leaked report, the company is delaying features promised last June intended to modernize Siri and boost Apple’s standing in the AI race.
Bloomberg obtained details of a Siri team meeting led by senior director Robby Walker, who oversees the division. Walker reportedly described the delay as an “ugly” situation and expressed sympathy for employees feeling frustrated by the situation. He also cautioned that the delayed Siri features might not make it into iOS 19 this year, despite the company’s current target.
“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker said, according to the report. “We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred.”
This news comes after Apple officially delayed features that were first promised last June. The meeting revealed a level of uncertainty that even people within Apple itself are experiencing.
Beyond the delay, the meeting indicated tension between the Siri unit and Apple’s marketing division. Walker said that the communications team wanted to showcase Siri’s features like understanding personal context and performing on-screen actions, even though they weren’t ready. Walker acknowledged that the resulting customer expectations made matters worse.
Apple has since pulled an iPhone 16 ad that showcased the features and added disclaimers to its website, noting that the release dates were now a TBD. Quality issues, which made the features non-functional up to a third of the time, contributed to holdbacks, according to Mark Gurman.
While Apple has not publicly addressed the matter beyond a statement last week confirming that the advanced Siri capabilities were “taking longer than expected,” Walker informed his staff that senior executives like software chief Craig Federighi and AI boss John Giannandrea are taking “intense personal accountability” for the predicament.
“Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri,” Walker said. “We’re going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready.” He also complimented the team’s past work as “incredibly impressive.”
“These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse,” Walker said of the delayed features.
