A lot has been said about Siri in the past year after Apple failed to deliver on its promise of a supercharged voice assistant. Multiple delays and three lawsuits later, we now have some inside information on what went wrong at Cupertino.
According to Bloomberg, Apple had rushed the development of its AI features after OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch in 2022, and things began falling apart when the team tried merging Siri’s old code with the new one.
Sources tell Gurman that Apple had no plans to launch Apple Intelligence until ChatGPT arrived. They say Apple’s software chief, Craig Federighi, realized the chatbot’s potential a month after its launch when he used it to write code for a personal project.
Soon, Federighi, along with Apple’s then AI head, John Giannandrea, and a few other executives, started meeting with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies to learn more about these AI models. Federighi also told his team that iOS 18 should infuse as many AI-powered features into an iPhone as possible.
Giannandrea then assembled a team and started working on building large language models (LLMs) for AI features. However, as Apple inched closer to Apple Intelligence’s debut in June 2024, internal tests showed that the chatbot lagged significantly behind ChatGPT, with OpenAI’s product delivering 25% better accuracy.
The desperate need for AI forced Apple to look for partners. For stronger user privacy, Giannandrea suggested Google, but Apple went on and announced OpenAI as their first AI partner at WWDC 24. Many AI-powered features were announced at the June event, including the ability to summon ChatGPT for requests Siri can’t fulfill. A delay pushed that feature to December 2024, but many others that were announced are still MIA—resulting in lawsuits and a new chapter in Apple’s ever-growing Siri struggles.
Some Apple Intelligence features were too buggy when Federighi started testing them on his personal phone before iOS 18.4. Worse was the communication between Apple’s product development and marketing teams. Apple had to pull down TV ads of iPhone 16 features that were nowhere close to being ready.
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Internally, Giannandrea has absorbed much of the blame for Siri’s failure. Several employees claim that Giannandrea lacked urgency for generative AI since he believed that consumers don’t trust it enough and that AI agents are far away from replacing humans.
Some employees also blame Giannandrea for not fighting hard to get the best talent or a bigger budget for his projects. Unlike Apple’s other leaders, who are strong personalities and run the company like a family business, Giannandrea is low-key, others say. “JG should have been much, much more aggressive in getting funding to go big. But John’s not a salesman. He’s a technologist,” an Apple employee tells Bloomberg.
Giannandrea didn’t push his team enough, says another Apple executive. Giannandrea has blamed the marketing team for overhyping unfinished products, employees say.
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Aside from these issues, Siri’s code was seen to have a major technical flaw. To add AI features, Apple engineers split Siri’s infrastructure in half. When they tried to merge Siri’s new AI features with legacy features, such as setting the alarm, things started falling apart.
The morale within the team has been low. “We’re not even being told what’s happening or why… There’s no leadership.” one employee says. CEO Tim Cook eventually lost faith in Giannandrea and replaced him with Vision Pro’s head, Mike Rockwell, in March.
Apple has continued work on Siri after shuffling personnel. A team in Zurich is creating a new software architecture built entirely on an LLM-based engine, and the project is called LLM Siri. Their aim is to make Siri more conversational and better at processing information. In the EU, Apple will also let users replace Siri with third-party assistants, according to a source.
According to an earlier New York Times report, some of Siri’s announced but unreleased features are expected this fall. Meanwhile, Apple is prepping for a huge iOS revamp scheduled for WWDC 25 next month.
About Jibin Joseph
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