Apple’s Siri Chief Acknowledges AI Delays, Promises Solutions

In recent weeks, Apple has been unable to escape news regarding its poor progress with everything having to do with Siri and artificial intelligence. The business has formally postponed improvements initially announced last June designed to update Siri and offer Apple a much-needed boost in the AI competition. The key feature delays have been unsightly and humiliating, according to Apple Inc.’s senior executive in charge of its Siri virtual assistant, and the choice to publicly promote the technology before it was ready made things worse, the official told colleagues. According to a recent all-hands conference, neither Apple nor we know when such Apple Intelligence capabilities will be available.

The whole details of a Siri team meeting chaired by senior director Robby Walker, who is in charge of the division, made the harsh remarks and is available at Bloomberg. He referred to the delay as an “ugly” scenario and expressed empathy for staff members who could be feeling exhausted or irritated by Apple’s choices and Siri’s still-unimpressive reputation further stating that the team was going through a difficult time. Although the company’s current goal is for iOS 19 to include the missing Siri functionality this year, he informed staff that this “doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then.” According to persons with knowledge of the situation, who requested not to be named since the meeting was private, Walker also stated that it’s uncertain when the improvements will really appear.

According to Bloomberg, Walker stated, “We have other commitments across Apple to other projects.” “We understand that those may now be more urgent than the features that have been postponed, and we want to honour our commitments to them.”

The candid conversation demonstrates the depth of Apple’s artificial intelligence dilemma, where the company is lagging behind its competitors. Siri, which is less sophisticated than competing systems, has come to represent Apple’s AI difficulties. When the corporation officially admitted last week that important features would be postponed forever, its problems reached a boiling point.

Walker made the suggestion during the all-hands meeting that his team members could be experiencing feelings of embarrassment, disappointment, anger, and burnout as a result of the features being delayed. According to those familiar with the situation, the corporation was rushing to get the technology ready for this spring, but now the features aren’t anticipated until at least next year.

Nevertheless, he commended the group for creating “incredibly impressive” capabilities and promised to provide customers with a virtual assistant that leads the market.

As part of a larger stock market meltdown that has crippled IT businesses, Apple’s stock had down 16% so far this year as of Thursday’s closing. The stock recovered on Friday, although it lost some of its gains in the afternoon. In New York, Apple was up 1.4% at $212.58 at 2:18 p.m.

According to a February 14 Bloomberg News story, Apple was having trouble with glitches and technical issues with its intended AI tools for Siri. In an effort to include the features into its iOS 18.5 operating system, Apple at the time delayed the release from April to May. It now plans to include them in an upgrade as early as the upcoming iOS 19 software cycle.

The meeting was scheduled last week, but an Apple representative in Cupertino, California, declined to comment.

The improvements, which were introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June of last year, are essential to improving Siri’s performance as a personal assistant. In order to better answer questions, the program will be able to access users’ personal information thanks to the technology. Additionally, Siri, which debuted in 2011, will be able to evaluate material on a user’s screen and more accurately operate programs.

However, Bloomberg claimed that Apple only had a barely functional prototype when it used a video mock-up to illustrate the features at WWDC. Because Apple had previously publicly displayed the features, Walker warned the team at the meeting that the delays were particularly “ugly.” “This was not a scenario where we could show people our plan after it was finished,” he stated. “We previously showed people.”

Tension between Apple’s marketing division and Siri section was also alluded to during the discussion. Walker said the PR team wanted to showcase capabilities like Siri knowing personal context and being able to take action based on what’s happening on a user’s screen — even though they were nowhere near ready. Walker agreed that the situation was exacerbated by the WWDC hints and the ensuing consumer expectations. Since then, Apple has removed an advertisement for the iPhone 16 that highlighted its features and inserted disclaimers to various parts of its website stating that all of the improvements have been postponed until an unspecified date. According to Mark Gurman, quality problems “that resulted in them not working properly up to a third of the time” were one of the reasons they were held back.

Walker claimed that Apple’s marketing communications staff sought to advertise the improvements, which made the situation worse. Even though they weren’t available, the capabilities were featured in a number of TV ads and marketing efforts that began last year.

Although there were no significant upgrades to the iPhone 16 range, Apple marketed the features as a major selling factor. Additionally, it is a component of Apple Intelligence, a larger AI initiative.

Walker questioned if the current release expectations could really be met. Walker stated that even though Apple is aiming for iOS 19, this “doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then.” He stated that trade-offs will have to be made because the corporation has a number of other development goals.

Walker mentioned future software and hardware developments when he stated, “We have other commitments across Apple to other projects.” “We understand that those may now be more urgent than the features that have been postponed, and we want to honour our commitments to them.” He stated that as development on items slated for next year advances, timetable choices would be decided on a “case-by-case basis.”

He stated, “Customers want a more complete, well-rounded Siri in addition to these new features.” “As soon as these features and more are available, we will ship them.”

Walker said that his boss, Apple’s head of AI, John Giannandrea, software director Craig Federighi, and other executives all shared “intense personal accountability” for this endeavour.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, Apple had no imminent plans to dismiss any key executives over the AI problem as of Friday. Theoretically, the choice may be altered at any moment. In any event, the business is ready to change its management. In order to support a turnaround attempt, it has talked of placing additional senior executives under Giannandrea. The corporation has already enlisted senior executive Kim Vorrath, who is known for fixing projects, to help the team.

Walker stated that quality concerns led to the decision to postpone the features, and the business discovered that the technology only functions correctly between two-thirds and 80% of the time, meaning it doesn’t operate every single time. To ensure that people have something to rely on, he stated that the team “can make more progress to get those percentages up.”

Other than stating last week that the sophisticated Siri features were “taking longer than expected,” Apple has not made any public comments on the matter. However, Walker informed his employees that top executives like AI chief John Giannandrea and software director Craig Federighi are assuming “intense personal accountability” for a situation that is receiving harsh criticism as the months go by with nothing more than a nicer Siri animation to show for their efforts.

According to Bloomberg, Federighi expressed worries to other top executives in recent weeks that the features weren’t functioning as promised, which finally led to the decision to postpone. With the business delaying the first set of features last year and giving hazy debut dates, Apple Intelligence’s problems were evident from the beginning.

“They should be proud,” Walker said in defense of his Siri group. He claimed that workers put their “hearts and souls into this thing.” “To make this happen and to make amazing progress together, I witnessed so many people giving everything they had.”

However, he stated that Apple wants to set a high standard and only release the features after they are complete. “Even though our competitors may have introduced these in this state or worse, they are not yet ready to be made available to the general public.”

Walker likened the venture to an attempt to reach Hawaii by swimming. He stated, “We set a Guinness Book of World Records for swimming distance — we swam hundreds of miles — but we still didn’t swim to Hawaii.” “And we were being jumped on, not because we did some incredible swimming, but because we didn’t reach our destination.”

During the discussion, he demonstrated how the technology operated by providing examples: On demand, it was able to retrieve specific images of a youngster and locate his driver’s license number. He also showed how voice control might be used to accurately control apps. It added recipients, changed other things, and inserted information in an email.

Walker said that although the personal search tool doesn’t always function well enough, employees should “feel really proud of innovative work” done to build it.

However, the business has achieved other objectives for Siri. This involves incorporating Apple product knowledge into the platform, improving consumer comprehension, and introducing a Type-to-Siri interface to iOS 18. As part of collaborations with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Baidu Inc., it is putting in extra effort to make Apple Intelligence available in China and plans to launch the service in many additional languages next month.

Some employees could be “relieved” about the delays, according to Walker. “You were undoubtedly wondering if these features were ready if you were using them in the build. What is my opinion on sending them to our clients? Is this the appropriate decision?

Some staff “may be feeling embarrassed,” he continued.

“It doesn’t feel good when your friends, family, or co-workers ask you what happened,” Walker added. “It’s perfectly normal to feel these emotions.” Others are experiencing burnout, he added, and his staff will have the right to get time off to rest and prepare for the “plenty of hard work ahead.”

The CEO stated that more care must be taken to integrate current features into iOS 19 since he didn’t want things to grow worse before they got better.

Apple will “ship the world’s greatest virtual assistant,” Walker said as he concluded the discussion with optimism.

However, there is still a long way to go. The first step in updating the software is the delayed Siri functionality. According to Bloomberg, Apple has been preparing updates for 2027 that would improve Siri’s conversational skills and enable it to more effectively compete with rival AI chatbots.

New infrastructure will be needed for this. Walker stated, “There are important things we will be changing and there are a lot we will be keeping.”

He said that the group had “learned a lot together.” “We’ll make the necessary changes to achieve better results in the future.”

“Customers want a more complete, well-rounded Siri in addition to these new features,” Walker stated. “As soon as these features and more are available, we will ship them.” The team’s work thus far has been “incredibly impressive,” he said. Regarding the delayed features, he stated, “Even though our competitors may have launched them in this state or worse, these are not quite ready to go to the general public.”