The background to Apple's failure to upgrade Siri has come to light

April 11, 2025

Apple is facing significant challenges in upgrading Siri with artificial intelligence, which has caused delays and internal turmoil.

The long-awaited version of Siri with built-in artificial intelligence, known as "Apple Intelligence", was expected to be released in 2024. However, its release has been postponed until at least 2026, with the possibility of a further delay until 2027.

Causes of Delay

Apple cites security issues as the main reason for the delay, in particular the risk of "prompt injections", where malicious users can trick the AI into bypassing restrictions.In addition, the company faces technical difficulties due to the existence of two different systems for the old and new Siri, which complicates the development and integration of the new features.

Internal Reactions and Impacts

Siri team leader Robby Walker described the delays as "ugly and embarrassing" in an internal meeting, acknowledging that some features are experiencing errors at a rate of up to 33% . The situation has led to frustration among employees and questions about the leadership of the artificial intelligence team.

User Reactions and Legal Implications

The delay has caused a backlash from users, resulting in the filing of a lawsuit for deceptive advertising, as Apple had promoted Siri's new features as a key feature of the iPhone 16 .

Perspectives

Apple plans to release an update to Siri with support for large language models (LLM) in iOS 18.5, however this will work alongside the old Siri, which may confuse users. Full feature integration is expected to take place with iOS 20, in 2027 at the earliest.

This situation has been one of the biggest challenges for Apple in recent years, affecting the company's credibility and consumer confidence.