Apple’s release date for a much smarter version of Siri will reportedly come in the fall, according to sources inside the company. While that’s many months later than Apple originally hoped, it’s still far sooner than some people feared.
Perhaps a recent shakeup of the Siri management team is bearing fruit.
Smarter Siri release date: Fall 2025?
Apple promised “the start of a new era for Siri” at WWDC24 last June, thanks to a hefty infusion of artificial intelligence. The company laid out a glowing future for the voice assistant, with a smarter Siri capable of doing almost anything an iPhone user could do.
Apple execs committed to launching the enhanced Siri in iOS 18. The company didn’t commit to an actual release date, saying the smarter Siri would come in an update, not the first version of iOS 18. Everyone expected the revamped Siri this spring. But in early March, the company admitted, “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.”
That new timeline raised the possibility that the AI-enhanced Siri might not arrive until 2026. But a report published Friday says we should expect it sooner.
“Apple hasn’t canceled its revamped Siri,” said The New York Times. “The company plans to release a virtual assistant in the fall capable of doing things like editing and sending a photo to a friend on request.”
The Times based its report on leaked information coming from “three people with knowledge of [Apple’s] plans.” Still, Apple did not yet confirm the updated Siri release date.
Siri under new management
An investigative report by The Information recently laid the blame for the delay of the AI-enhanced Siri on poor management. John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, reportedly was unimpressed with the capabilities of large language models — the exact LLMs that are now at the heart of the AI revolution.
Giannandrea reportedly wanted Siri to continue to work like it was originally programmed more than a decade ago, remaining essentially a database of predetermined answers to common questions asked by users.
After last month’s public embarrassment of admitting the revamped Siri release date remained up to a year away, Apple reportedly put Mike Rockwell in charge of upgrading Siri with AI. Previously, he led the creation and launch of the Apple Vision Pro headset. With Giannandrea no longer involved, the Siri team seems to have finally sped up development and bumped up the release date.
Still, Rockwell has his work cut out for him. “The company postponed the spring release of an improved Siri because internal testing found that it was inaccurate on nearly a third of requests,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Supposedly, what’s coming when the Siri release date finally arrives is what was promised at WWDC24. Apple presented a vision of simple voice commands being used to carry out complex tasks. The company used the example, “Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia.”
