Apple staff concerned about new Siri, raise red flags ahead of iOS 26.4 launch: Report

To say that AI has been a pain point for Apple over the last two years or so would be an understatement. The company lagged behind the competition in the unveiling of its AI features, which it dubbed Apple Intelligence, and many of them were still not ready by the time its iPhone 16 series went to shelves last year.

​While other AI features made their way to Apple users with a delay, the company’s revamped Siri did not. The modernized version of Siri was expected to be rolled out with the iOS 18.4 update last year, but that never happened, and the company later admitted that the rollout would be delayed by a year or so.

​Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi admitted earlier in the year that the planned Siri revamp did not achieve the necessary quality check inside the company and hoped that it would be ready in time for a rollout in 2026.

​The new Siri is expected to make its debut with the iOS 26.4 update next year and is still expected to be about six months away from launch. However, Apple whisperer and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has noted that Apple engineers are still concerned about the performance of the new Siri.

​In his weekly Power On newsletter, Gurman wrote, “I strongly believe there will be more senior members of the company’s AI ranks hitting the exits soon, especially if the new Siri coming in the spring falls flat. Already, there are concerns from people testing iOS 26.4 — the OS version slated to include the new Siri — about the voice assistant’s performance.”

​The departures that Gurman is talking about here are from the company’s foundation models team, most of whom have been recruited by Meta, which has formed a new Meta Superintelligence Labs unit. Meanwhile, if reports are to be believed, there is uncertainty inside Apple over developing and using its in-house models or using models from rivals like Anthropic or Google for future AI offerings.

​Among the top departures inside Apple are its AI Search Head, Ke Yang, Head of Foundations Models team Ruoming Pang, and AI and Search Executive Robby Walker.

​Apple’s Siri Revamp Strategy

​Apple has reportedly been working on two different approaches for the Siri revamp: one favors using its own model, which would run on-device, and another on using Google’s Gemini model, running on Private Cloud Compute.

​Gurman didn’t go into details about which model has seen performance criticisms inside the company.

​During the WWDC 2024 conference, Apple showed off on-screen awareness, personal context understanding, and cross-app actions for Siri. If this were to have materialized, it would have helped the voice assistant become a “hands-free” controller for the iPhone, as Apple intended. Instead, Siri is now relying on ChatGPT for answering more difficult queries from users, and the voice assistant is facing growing competition from a wave of AI startups.