- Apple Reportedly Delaying Some Siri 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 in June 2024
The long-promised Siri AI overhaul is becoming a huge embarrassment for Apple, because even though it was originally announced in June 2024, when Apple said it would launch as part of iOS 18 that year, it’s now 2026 and it still hasn’t happened. Not only that, but it looks like it’s being delayed even further.
We had 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 that were previously planned for iOS 26.4 will now ship with iOS 26.5, due in May, and iOS 27, due in September.
Gurman – who has an excellent track record on Apple news – cites “people familiar with the subject” and adds that the features most likely to disappear are “voice control of in-app actions” and “the expanded ability for Siri to tap into personal data,” which, as Gurman explains, “would allow users to ask the assistant to, for example, search old text messages to locate a podcast shared by a friend and play it immediately.”
So if this is correct, the Siri AI overhaul won’t get most of its core features until about two years after it was first announced, and the parts that don’t arrive until iOS 27 will arrive two years later than Apple initially announced.
An unreasonably long wait
Even in isolation, that would be a ridiculously long delay, and one that’s not very fair to customers — including myself — 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 features, with Gemini having delivered much of what Apple has been promising in Siri for years now.
In fact, Apple is so far behind that it appears to have – for now at least – essentially given up on trying to compete directly and has instead signed a deal with Google to use Gemini as the brains behind Siri. But even with this agreement in place, the wait continues.
Apple is no stranger to embarrassments and failures, from “antenna” and “Bendgate” to the terrible state in which Apple Maps launched and the abandoned AirPower wireless charger, but none of these problems have lasted as long as the current Siri debacle.
And not only is Siri miles ahead of the competition here, but even before the emergence of AI, Siri was generally considered less capable than its rivals, so for whatever reason, it’s something that 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 gone so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s delayed further.
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