Report: Apple internally acknowledges ‘ugly and embarrassing’ Siri delays

Macworld

According to a report from Bloomberg, Senior Director of Siri and Information Intelligence Robby Walker held an all-hands meeting to discuss the recent delay of new Siri features.

He called the delay of these key features “ugly and embarrassing,” according to the report, and said the team was facing a “bad period.” The features in question—on-screen awareness, personal context, and in-app actions, have reportedly been delayed until at least 2026, but Walker did not state in the meeting when the features would actually be delivered. Apple has only said publically that the new Siri features would arrive “in the coming year.”

The features were promoted before they were ready, he acknowledged and lamented that his team is probably feeling pretty bad right about now. According to Bloomberg’s account, Walker vowed to deliver “an industry-leading virtual assistant.”

It’s unclear if Apple has the right organization or vision to achieve that. As we wrote recently, Siri didn’t just miss a deadline for new advanced AI features, it’s actually embarrassingly bad at all the things it’s already supposed to do well. Walker said that, while the company is aiming to release the delayed Siri features in the iOS 19 timeframe, it may not even make that release target. “We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” he said, adding “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.”

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Siri is in bad shape and hope is not on the horizon. Dramatic improvements are needed not just to “catch up” to rivals, but to deliver existing Siri features at a quality level Apple can be proud of. It may be that Siri needs to be entirely re-engineered from the ground up, and that sort of thing can take years, even if it’s already underway. Meanwhile, Apple rivals in the AI space are racing ahead—by the time Apple delivers a “new and improved” Siri, how advanced will the competition be?

The Bloomberg report states that Apple doesn’t plan to fire any executives over Apple’s increasing AI troubles, but that the situation can change at any time.