Apple has officially delayed its most anticipated AI-powered Siri features until at least 2025, pushing key advancements like personal context, onscreen awareness, and deeper app integration beyond iOS 18. While the company did not specify an exact timeline, its statement that these features will arrive “next year” strongly suggests they are now expected to launch with iOS 19, or possibly even iOS 20.
Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also 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 had initially announced these updates at WWDC 2024 as part of its broader Apple Intelligence initiative, which promised a more capable, personalized Siri experience. These features were expected to roll out gradually throughout the iOS 18 cycle, but Apple’s public acknowledgment of the delay indicates that they will not be arriving in any upcoming iOS 18 updates. If Apple had planned to release them in iOS 18.5 or 18.6, it likely wouldn’t have issued a statement at all. Instead, the company appears to be resetting expectations, allowing itself more time to refine these advanced AI capabilities.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg and John Gruber of Daring Fireball have pointed out that Apple’s phrasing aligns with its standard annual software release schedule, making iOS 19 the most likely launch window. However, given the complexity of integrating AI-driven enhancements at the system level, it’s also possible that Apple may push these features even further, holding back some of the most advanced upgrades for iOS 20.
The delay is particularly significant because AI-powered Siri was one of the key highlights of Apple’s WWDC keynote. Apple Intelligence promised an assistant that could understand and remember user context, perform cross-app tasks seamlessly, and interact with onscreen elements—putting it in direct competition with Google Assistant, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and other AI-driven assistants. While some minor Siri improvements have already launched in iOS 18, the absence of these core features means Apple’s AI strategy is still incomplete.
Competitors like Google and OpenAI are rapidly advancing their AI models, and Apple will need to ensure that Siri’s delayed features are polished enough to make a meaningful impact when they finally arrive. If Apple Intelligence doesn’t deliver on its promise of a smarter, more intuitive Siri, Apple risks falling behind in the AI assistant race, even as it takes a more cautious approach to privacy and data security.
(via Daring Fireball)
