Concerns grow over ‘new’ Siri’s performance, as Apple’s AI struggles continue

Macworld

Apple made its belated entry to the AI market last year, with its Apple Intelligence platform limping out of the starting gate a month and a half after the iPhone 16. Even then, the software was incomplete and missing several features that appeared in iPhone 16 advertising. And one of these, contextually aware Siri, has still not made its debut a year later.

There have been multiple setbacks and delays along the way, but the so-called “new” Siri, with improved accuracy and an expanded feature set powered by AI, was finally expected to arrive with the rollout of iOS 26.4 around March next year. Even that now appears optimistic, however, with the news that internal testers are raising concerns about the software’s performance.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman discusses the troubling exodus of AI talent from Apple Park, noting that at this point, the company’s AI woes are having more impact on its own staff than on customer interest in its products. (The iPhone 17, he notes, appears to be selling well, despite Apple Intelligence’s shortcomings.) And he predicts the spate of resignations will only get worse next year if iOS 26.4 can’t turn things around.

“I strongly believe there will be more senior members of the company’s AI ranks hitting the exits soon, especially if the new Siri coming in the spring falls flat,” Gurman writes. “Already, there are concerns from people testing iOS 26.4–the OS version slated to include the new Siri—about the voice assistant’s performance.”

Gurman doesn’t give any details about these concerns. Siri’s shortcomings can currently be split into two categories: it can’t do as many things as other voice assistants, and it’s less accurate when doing them. The new Siri is supposed to tackle both categories, and if it fails to achieve that, we’d call that concerning performance. Perhaps the new Siri is still making comprehension errors; perhaps it still can’t handle contextual conversation. But it’s so far behind at the moment that it doesn’t really matter what’s going wrong, because it needs to get everything right to catch up.

This far ahead of launch (we’re only on iOS 26.0.1 at present, with iOS 26.1 in the beta testing phase), work on 26.4 is purely internal, and there’s plenty of time to fix the problems that have been picked up. It’s just hard to be optimistic after all the delays Apple’s AI division has already suffered. And with some of Apple’s most talented employees headed for the exit door, it would be naive to assume that everything will be sorted in time for the spring.