- Apple has reportedly delayed some of Siri’s AI features beyond iOS 26.4
- These will apparently now land as part of iOS 26.5 or iOS 27
- These features were first announced back in June 2024
Siri’s long-promised AI overhaul is becoming a major embarrassment for Apple, as although this was originally announced back in June 2024, at which point Apple said it would launch as part of iOS 18 that year, we’re now in 2026 and it still hasn’t arrived. Not only that, but it has reportedly now been delayed further.
We’d heard that it might finally arrive — at least in part — with iOS 26.4, which is expected to roll out soon, but now Apple watcher Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg (via 9to5Mac ), has said that at least some of the features previously planned for iOS 26.4 will now ship with iOS 26.5, which is expected in September, instead of May, in and with iOS.
Gurman — who has an excellent track record for Apple information — cites “people familiar with the matter,” adding that the most likely features to slide are “voice-based control of in-app actions” and “the expanded ability for Siri to use personal data,” which, Gurman explains, “would let users ask the assistant to, say, search an old text message right away and play it right away.”
So if this is correct, Siri’s AI overhaul won’t get most of its core features until about two years after it was first announced, and parts that don’t arrive until iOS 27 will be a full two years later than Apple originally said to expect them.
Unreasonably long waiting time
Even in isolation, this would be a ridiculously long delay, and one that isn’t very fair to customers — myself included — who upgraded to the iPhone 16 series phones in part because of the promise of these features.
But it gets even worse when you consider how far ahead Android is when it comes to AI capabilities, with Gemini delivering much of what Apple has been promising Siri for years now.
In fact, Apple is so far behind that it appears to have – for the time being at least – essentially given up trying to compete directly and has instead struck a deal with Google to use Gemini as the brains behind Siri. But even with that agreement in place, the wait continues.
Apple is no stranger to embarrassments and failures, from ‘antennagate’ and ‘bendgate’ to the terrible state Apple Maps launched in and the abandoned AirPower wireless charger, but none of these problems dragged on as long as the current Siri debacle.
And not only is Siri miles behind the competition here, but even before AI came along, Siri was generally considered less capable than the competition, so for whatever reason, this is something Apple has struggled with in one way or another since the launch of Siri itself.
Hopefully Siri will finally be competitive once this promised AI overhaul is delivered, but with the way things have been going so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s delayed even further.
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