After lagging in AI, 2026 will be critical for Apple’s Siri

Apple’s Siri icon
As 2025 draws to a close, Apple finds itself under mounting pressure to prove its mettle in the generative AI race, having effectively sidelined major advancements this year amid development challenges and a deliberate focus on quality over speed. The company’s highly anticipated overhaul of Siri — a more personal, context-aware assistant capable of complex tasks and deep app integration—remains delayed until 2026, leaving investors and users questioning its strategy while competitors like Google, OpenAI, and Meta surge ahead with bold AI innovations. With recent leadership shake-ups and mixed reception to existing Apple Intelligence features, 2026 emerges as a make-or-break year for the company to finally deliver on its AI promises and reclaim momentum.
Kif Leswing for CNBC:
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Apple doesn’t usually tell the public its product roadmap, but in Siri’s case, the iPhone maker made an exception. The company was supposed to launch the new AI assistant in 2025. But in March, Apple delayed the upgrade, even after running ads for the feature, to sometime in “the coming year.”
As consumers become increasingly accustomed to holding free-flowing conversations with the likes of ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini chatbots, the pressure is on Apple to keep up. 
CEO Tim Cook told investors in October that Apple has been making good progress on Siri, and that’s “raised the bar meaningfully about what to expect,” said Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster. 
“They basically said that this year, don’t bother us about AI, and we’ll blow you away by what we show next year,” Munster said…
In early December, Apple said John Giannandrea, the company’s machine learning and AI strategy chief, would retire in 2026. Many of his responsibilities will be split among COO Sabih Khan, services chief Eddy Cue and new hire Amar Subramanya, who previously worked at Google and Microsoft. Software chief Craig Federighi also gained expanded oversight over AI, with Subramanya reporting to him, Apple said.
The hiring of Subramanya, who was the head of engineering for Google Gemini before briefly joining Microsoft in an AI executive role, is particularly notable. The iPhone maker doesn’t tend to publicly discuss its engineering talent, especially new hires that don’t report directly to Cook.
The public announcement of a vice president hire like Subramanya shows how important it is for Apple to prove to investors and the public that it’s willing to shake up its AI leadership…
“Investors have already gotten enough gray hairs waiting for Apple to come out with their AI strategy,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “It’s time to come out and show the world what the strategy is.”

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MacDailyNews Take: We are hearing the LLM Siri will be worth the wait!

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