Apple Delays Major AI-Powered Siri Upgrade
Apple has once again delayed the rollout of significant upgrades to its Siri virtual assistant. The planned enhancements, intended to leverage advanced AI, reportedly failed to meet the company's internal standards for speed and accuracy. This represents another setback in Apple's efforts to compete with rivals in the AI assistant space.
- The current AI model - powering the Siri upgrades is reportedly codenamed Linwood and is part of a broader "Apple Intelligence" initiative. Some of the more advanced features, initially slated for an early 2025 release and then pushed to March 2026, may now be postponed until the release of iOS 27. - Internal strife has reportedly plagued Apple's AI development, with tensions between Craig Federighi's software engineering team and John Giannandrea's AI division, which some employees nicknamed "AIMless". This has been compounded by a "talent drain," with key AI personnel leaving for competitors like Meta, OpenAI, and xAI. - Apple's core commitment to user privacy has created a strategic challenge, as it limits the vast data collection used by competitors like Google to train their AI models. The company is focusing on on-device processing to maintain its privacy standards, a different approach from the cloud-centric models of its rivals. - To bridge the gap, Apple has entered into partnerships, including an agreement to use Google's Gemini AI technology to power some future Apple Intelligence features. There have also been reported discussions with Anthropic about incorporating their AI models into Siri. - The underlying technology for Siri, which originated from a DARPA project and was acquired by Apple in 2010, has been described by industry insiders as outdated and difficult to overhaul. This has necessitated a fundamental rebuild of the assistant's architecture to compete with modern AI. - In tests comparing it to rivals, Google Assistant correctly answered 93% of questions, while Siri answered 83% correctly and Alexa 80%. However, Siri performed better than Google Assistant in executing commands like sending texts or creating calendar entries. - The delayed features are part of a larger suite of "Apple Intelligence" updates announced at WWDC 2024, which include AI-powered writing tools, photo editing, and audio transcription. These features will require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer due to their processing demands. - Analysts from Evercore ISI anticipate a multi-phase rollout for the new AI features, with some upgrades potentially arriving mid-year and a more comprehensive Siri overhaul in the fall. However, other reports suggest the "true modernized, conversational version of Siri" may not arrive until 2027 with iOS 20.
