Apple has confirmed its generative AI overhaul of Siri has been delayed and reading between the lines it seems like we might have to wait until iOS 19.
The new smarter and more personalised Siri is considered the biggest and most important of the first year of Apple Intelligence features and was initially expected in next month’s iOS 18.4 update.
However, it’s nowhere to be seen in the beta versions for the best iPhone models, and multiple reports have suggested it may be delayed until later versions moving into the summer.
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Judging by Apple’s statement on the matter, that might be optimistic. An Apple spokesperson told Daring Fireball that the features are taking longer than desired to ready for prime time.
Rather than laying out an imminent timeline, the company is only prepared to say it envisions rolling the new Siri out later this year. Anticipates, not promises mind.
The spokesperson said: “Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT.
“We’ve also been working on a more personalised Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”
In the coming year? Well, you’d think that means this calendar year rather than in the next 12 months. However with WWDC coming in June and iOS 19 due in September (if tradition is followed) it would be really surprising if any Siri revamp came as part of iOS 18.
Can we call Apple Intelligence a success?
The lack of a coherent rollout for Apple Intelligence shows how rushed Apple felt to get something out there during this release cycle. Given the competition and its speed of growth, Apple will have been desperate to get a foothold. However, what we’ve seen so far has it left a positive impression?
Arguably the headline feature is in serious danger of arriving in the next release cycle The news summaries were the most talked about feature for all the wrong reasons and things like Writing Tools, Image Playground and Genmoji haven’t really pulled up any trees. Would Apple have been better off waiting a year?
