Media365
Apple ’s biggest upgrade to Siri — which the company last year said would make its digital assistant smarter and more useful — is not coming until the next few months. Bloomberg has reported that a long-due artificial intelligence revamp in Siri as part of Apple Intelligence features is facing technical glitches, engineering problems, and software bugs, potentially delaying the rollout.
According to the report, the implementation of features that Apple has already advertised for a smarter Siri was expected to come through by April. However, it could have been delayed until May or later. An improved Siri, originally expected to be part of the iOS 18.4 rollout in April, may now be released with iOS 18.5 sometime in May.
A smarter Siri, Apple said, will have a more precise control on apps, allowing users to get done more. It will also gain the ability to fetch a user’s data to answer questions and take actions better — much like Google Assistant with Gemini support. After the update, Apple’s digital assistant will also be able to see the content on the iPhone’s screen and use the context to target questions more efficiently.
The real-life uses could include asking Siri to locate a file or asking for a song they talked about with a friend on iMessage, or finding a flight’s details and making reservations accordingly.
These improvements are a part of Apple’s roadmap for Apple Intelligence service, which has been rolling out incrementally on eligible devices. Last year, the iPhone maker said the Siri upgrades would not be released until 2025 but did not specify a timeline. However, Bloomberg cited Apple’s internal communication to say that the changes in Siri were expected to be part of iOS 18.4.
A delay in Siri’s AI upgrades could derail Apple’s strategy to take on rivals that have become more established AI products. For instance, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama have shown better results. According to the report, teams behind Apple Intelligence have struggled to meet deadlines, with some engineers saying that some AI features were rolled out in a rush to “appease an AI-obsessed Wall Street.”
