Revelations from an Apple meeting highlight Siri's serious situation.

In recent weeks, Apple has been in the spotlight due to its slow progress regarding Siri and artificial intelligence. The company has officially delayed the features that were promised last June, designed to modernize Siri and provide a much-needed boost in the AI competition. The release date for these Apple capabilities remains uncertain, and according to a recent internal meeting, it seems that even the company itself lacks clarity on the matter.

Recently, a meeting of the Siri team was held, led by Robby Walker, the senior director overseeing this division. Walker described the delay as an "ugly" situation and expressed his understanding for employees who may feel exhausted or frustrated with the company's decisions and Siri's still mediocre reputation. He also mentioned that it is not guaranteed that Siri's missing features will launch with iOS 19 this year; while that is the current goal, he emphasized that it does not mean they will be available by that date.

Walker explained that Apple has other commitments with different projects that are now potentially more urgent in terms of deadlines, which has influenced the decision to postpone improvements to Siri. The meeting also reflected tensions between the Siri unit and the marketing team. Walker indicated that the communications team wanted to highlight features such as Siri's ability to understand personal contexts and perform actions based on what the user has on screen, despite those functions not being ready yet. These hints at WWDC and the expectations generated among customers further complicated the situation, leading Apple to withdraw an ad for the iPhone 16 that showcased those features.

Since then, the company has added warnings in several areas of its website, indicating that the features have been postponed to a date to be determined, partly due to quality issues that have resulted in poor performance about one-third of the time. Although Apple has not publicly commented on the situation beyond a recent statement mentioning that Siri's advanced capabilities were "taking longer than expected," Walker told his team that high executives like Craig Federighi, head of software, and John Giannandrea, in charge of artificial intelligence, are taking "intense personal responsibility" for a problem that has received strong criticism as the months pass without significant advancements beyond a more attractive Siri animation.

“Customers are not only expecting these new features, but they also want a more complete Siri,” Walker assured. “We are going to launch these features and more as soon as they are ready.” He acknowledged the "incredibly impressive" work of the team thus far, adding that these features are not yet ready to be presented to the public, even though competitors may have launched them in a similar or worse state.