Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI software features that were unveiled last year, has been rolled out to eligible devices in recent months. However, one of the promised upgrades was an upgraded version of Siri, which has reportedly faced multiple delays. A new report sheds some light on the challenges faced by the company, as it attempts to rebuild Siri to compete with more advanced voice assistants from rivals like Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity that all offer support for AI features.
Apple’s Efforts to Revamp Siri Led to Software Bugs
Citing employees who recently left the firm, the Financial Times reports that Apple has faced technological challenges while attempting to introduce support for large language models (LLMs) on its Siri voice assistant. These upgrades were expected to enable Siri to deliver more conversational responses, with up-to-date information. Apple previously admitted that the Siri upgrades it promised last year were delayed and not expected to arrive until next year.
According to the report, the company attempted to integrate its own LLMs with the existing version of Siri, which already features some machine learning technology. This led to software bugs that have delayed the development of the product. Currently, users can ask Siri to control various system settings, or use a built-in ChatGPT button to access information on the internet.
Apple’s rivals reportedly built their voice assistants without using existing software, which means these fresh projects (ChatGPT, Gemini AI, and Perplexity) were less complicated, which reduced the number of bugs in the software.
Another reason why Apple’s Siri upgrade faced delays was due to the company’s decision to rely on “smaller” AI models, and keeping all user data on the device, to protect user privacy. The company’s rivals use much larger AI models and process user data on the cloud, which means that they are faster.
While the upgraded version of Siri has yet to launch (Apple has taken down its ads related to that feature), the company has rolled out features like Genmoji, Visual Intelligence, Writing Tools, to compatible devices. These include the iPhone 15 Pro models, as well as the company’s current iPhone 16 lineup.
According to recent reports, Apple is not expected to make any major announcements related to Siri and AI at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that begins on Monday. The company is said to be working on a major software redesign for iOS and iPadOS, and some of these changes are also expected to make their way to other operating systems, including macOS.
