What went wrong with Apple Intelligence Siri development?

On Friday, Apple officially delayed the release of its promised iOS 18 Siri features. Those features, including personal context, on-screen awareness, and in-app actions, will now release “in the coming year.” We had already received hints that these features would be delayed, but now we know for sure. This leaves the question, what went wrong?

Apple’s statement never gave a clear answer. The company said said that it’s going to take longer than it thought, but never cited any specific reasons for the delays. However, some insights from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman give us some potential answers for what went wrong.

Poor Siri infrastructure

While developing new Siri features for iOS 18, Apple didn’t have the time to create one unified backend for handling all Siri requests. As a result, theres two systems, one for legacy commands, and one for more advanced ones. That complicates development, per Bloomberg:

The current iOS 18 version of Siri essentially has two brains: one that operates the legacy Siri commands, like timers and making calls, and another that handles more advanced queries. The latter capability will be able to tap user data and already is used to not get confused when people change their request mid-command.

In order to get Apple Intelligence out the door as part of iOS 18, the company didn’t have time to meld the two systems together. That means the software doesn’t work as smoothly as it could.

Apple plans to release a unified system for iOS 19, but obviously that doesn’t do anything for the iOS 18 features that it promised. Given Apple’s usage of “in the coming year” rather than “in the coming months”, this likely means that the company wants to wait on the new Siri backend in iOS 19 to release these more advanced features.

Internal problems

Additionally, Bloomberg reports that development for these new features hasn’t necessarily gone smoothly, as one could assume. The report describes Apple engineers as “racing to fix a rash of bugs”, and states that engineers believe the features won’t be ready until next year at the earliest, likely iOS 19.3 or later.

Apple software executive Craig Federighi also voiced concerns over the features, in their current form, not aligning with how Apple had marketed them to work:

In the lead-up to the latest delay, software chief Craig Federighi and other executives voiced strong concerns internally that the features didn’t work properly — or as advertised — in their personal testing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Lastly, some Apple employees question whether or not the AI teams need better leadership, and that the company will continue to fall behind without a change in leadership:

Apple employees are questioning whether Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook or the company’s board needs to take action to change the leadership of the AI group. They believe that, short of major changes, Apple will continue to fall behind. 

Overall, Apple is facing a heap of technical challenges headed into this, and the company likely would’ve been better off not rushing into the AI craze. I’m sure the allegedly poor leadership isn’t helping the teams as well.

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