Apple's Big AI Siri Plans Are Once Again Delayed

If you're an Apple fan who closely follows tech news, you might have been looking forward to Siri's big AI overhaul for some time now—specifically, since the company initially announced it at WWDC 2024. But despite delay after delay, rumors have strongly suggested that the next generation of Siri is set to launch with iOS 26.4. And seeing as Apple just released iOS 26.3 this week, AI Siri is closer than ever, right? Wrong.

As reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has once again kicked Siri's big updates down the road. According to Gurman, the company really did intend to release AI Siri with iOS 26.4, which is reportedly planned to release sometime in March. However, due to testing "snags," the company is instead planning to break up Siri's major updates and distribute them across several iOS updates. Gurman notes that likely means iOS 26.5, which could launch in May, and iOS 27, which will likely release in September, if it follows Apple's usual release dates. But looking at Apple's track record here, don't hold your breath.

AI Siri's upcoming features are a struggle

According to Gurman's sources, Apple is struggling to get Siri to "properly process queries," or to actually respond fast enough, both of which would defeat the purpose of using a smart assistant. Apple is reportedly pushing engineers to use iOS 26.5 to test these features, particularly the ability for Siri to use your personal data to answer questions. Users may be able to flip a switch in Settings to "preview" these features, and may treat the rollout as a beta.

Engineers are also struggling to get Siri's app intents to work, or the feature that lets Siri take actions on your behalf. You could ask Siri to open an image, edit it, then share it with a friend, but only if the feature itself actually works. This, too, may roll out with iOS 26.5, but it's unclear due to reliability issues. Siri is also cutting off user prompts too soon, and sometimes taps into ChatGPT instead of using Apple's underlying tech—which would look pretty bad for the company.

Apple is also testing new AI features for iOS 26.5 that we haven't heard of yet. One is a new web search tool that functions like other AI search features from companies like Perplexity and Google. You ask a question to search on the web, and it returns a report with summaries and links. The other new feature is a custom image generation tool, that builds on Image Playground, but that too is hitting development hurdles.

Looking even further ahead, Apple is planning more Siri advancements—namely, giving the assistant chatbot features, à la ChatGPT. (That said, it will reportedly use Gemini to power these features.) This version of Siri may even have its own app.

What's going on with AI Siri?

It seems Siri really is Apple's albatross. Despite arguably popularizing smart assistants for the general population, Siri quickly fell behind compared to the likes of Alexa and Gemini (née Google Assistant). Now, the latter have fully embraced modern generative AI, offering features like contextual awareness and natural language commands. While Amazon and Google users can ask their assistants increasingly complicated questions, Siri still feels designed mostly to handle setting alarms and checking the weather.

That was going to change with iOS 18, alongside Apple Intelligence as a whole. Apple's initial pitch for AI Siri was an assistant that could see what's on your phone to better understand questions you ask, and take actions on your behalf—i.e., app intents. You could ask Siri to edit an image you have pulled up on your Photos app, and because the assistant is contextually aware, it would know what image you mean, and apply the edits you ask for. Or, you could ask when your friend was set to arrive, and the assistant would be able to scan messages and emails to know that, one, your friend is visiting town this weekend, and two, that they sent you their flight itinerary that gets them into the airport at 3:55 p.m.

This Siri has never launched, however. While the company has rolled out iterative updates to Siri with some AI-powered features, its overhaul with these ambitious features have been a trial for Apple's AI team. It all stems from Apple's issues with AI in general: The company was caught off guard by the generative AI wave kicked off in late 2022 by OpenAI's ChatGPT, and following some resistance from corporate leadership, have been scrambling to keep up ever since. Apple Intelligence launched half-baked with issues of its own, but rather than launch a half-baked AI Siri, the company has been struggling to build up the assistant internally.

Part of the problem is privacy-related: Unlike other tech companies, who have no problem hoovering up user data to train their models with, Apple still wants to preserve privacy while rolling out AI features. As such, that complicates their situation, as they need to ensure both the hardware and software involved meet those standards. You can't have Siri pull user data into the cloud without strict security measures if you want to ensure your users' data remains private. The company is also focused on building its own hardware for cloud-based AI processing, rather than focus on simply buying up GPUs as many other companies have.

Apple is the second most valuable tech company in the world, but a host of factors—including with software, hardware, and leadership—have made it so even Apple can't magically produce an AI assistant. Though, I'm not sold that an AI Siri will move units for Apple in the first place. I can't imagine Gemini moves people to Android, and you can download ChatGPT on any device you own. It's even now built into your iPhone.

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