Apple delays AI improvements to Siri until 2026, says voice assistant will be 'more personalised'

Apple said on Friday that it would postpone several AI enhancements to Siri, its voice assistant, until 2026.

In a statement, Apple said it has “been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”

Apple provided no explanation for the hold-ups.  The iPhone manufacturer has already stated that the functionalities will be available in 2025.

Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered features that the company unveiled last year, includes new functionality like email rewriting and inbox summarisation.

Giving its Siri assistant the capacity to switch between programs and finish activities for a user by accessing data saved on Apple devices was one of the largest enhancements.

Apple provided examples based on data stored on the device, such as asking Siri to retrieve flight tracking information from a relative or a podcast that a friend suggested.

The company has been building a vast new cloud computing infrastructure that runs on its own chips in an effort to maintain its privacy stance while delivering AI features. Apple has said Siri fields 1.5 billion user requests per day.

Apple’s rivals have also been rushing to add AI features to their voice assistants, with Alphabet’s Google adding its Gemini model to its assistant last year.

Amazon last month rolled out an AI-driven overhaul of its Alexa assistant, saying that the new capabilities would be free for subscribers to its Prime program but cost $19.99 a month otherwise.