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At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 25), Apple announced a slew of updates to its operating systems, services, and software, including a new look it dubbed “Liquid Glass” and a rebranded naming convention. Apple was notably quiet on one highly anticipated product: a more personalized, AI-powered Siri, which it first introduced at last year’s conference.
Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, only gave the Siri update a brief mention during the keynote address, saying, “As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal. This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.”
The time frame of “coming year” seems to indicate that Apple won’t have news before 2026. That’s a significant delay in the AI era, where new models, updates, and upgrades ship at a rapid pace.
First announced at WWDC 24, the more personalized Siri is expected to bring artificial intelligence updates to the beleaguered virtual assistant built into iPhone and other Apple devices. At the time, the company hyped it as the “next big step for Apple” and said Siri would be able to understand your “personal context,” like your relationships, communications, routine, and more.
Plus, the assistant was going to be more useful by allowing you to take action within and across your apps.
While Bloomberg reported that the in-development version of the more personalized Siri was functional, it was not consistently working properly. The report said its quality issues meant Siri only performed as it should two-thirds of the time, making it not viable to ship.
Apple officially announced in March it was pushing back the launch, saying the Siri update would take longer to deliver than anticipated. The company also pulled SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea off the Siri project and put Mike Rockwell, who had worked on the Vision Pro, in charge.
The shake-up indicated the company was trying to get back on track after stumbling on a major release. It also suggested Apple’s AI technology was behind that of rivals, like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, worrying investors.
In the meantime, Apple partnered with OpenAI to help close the gap; when users asked Siri questions the assistant couldn’t answer, those could be directed to ChatGPT instead. With the upcoming release, iOS 26, Apple has updated its AI image generation app, Image Playground, to use ChatGPT as well.
At this year’s WWDC, the company continued to make other AI promises, including developer access to the on-device foundation models, live translation, upgrades to Genmoji (in addition to aforementioned Image Playground), Visual Intelligence improvements, an AI “Workout Buddy” for Apple Watch, AI in Xcode, and the introduction of an updated, AI-powered version of its Shortcuts app for scripting and automation.
