A week after Apple admitted that its revamped Siri with onscreen awareness would be delayed, a top executive addressed the AI crisis.<\/b>
\nA week after Apple admitted that its revamped Siri with onscreen awareness and context understanding would be delayed with a release in the \u201ccoming year,\u201d Bloomberg\u2018s Mark Gurman reports that Apple\u2019s senior director at Siri\u2019s division, Robby Walker, had an all-hands meeting with his team, and said that delaying these key features has been \u201cugly\u201d and \u201cembarrassing.\u201d
More interestingly, the report reveals that the company had nothing more than a video mock-up of these features, as it had \u201ca barely working prototype\u201d during the WWDC 2024 keynote. With that, the top Apple executive said in the meeting that it\u2019s \u201cunclear when the enhancement will actually launch.\u201d
Gurman reports: \u201cDuring the all-hands gathering, Walker suggested that employees on his team may be feeling angry, disappointed, burned out, and embarrassed after the features were postponed. The company had been racing to get the technology ready for this spring, but now the features aren\u2019t expected until next year at the earliest, people familiar with the matter have said.\u201d
What makes this crisis worse is that Apple heavily promoted features that were nowhere near launching, including an iPhone 16 ad highlighting the onscreen awareness of Siri, which has now been made private on YouTube.
Even though Gurman says Apple\u2019s executives took \u201cintense personal accountability\u201d for this PR crisis, Apple doesn\u2019t plan to \u201cimmediately fire any top executives,\u201d although this could change at any time.
Still, the journalist reveals the situation isn\u2019t as bad as it could be. The onscreen awareness of Siri would work two-thirds to 80% of the time. Still, the executives understood the percentage needed to be higher to actually be helpful to customers, so Apple decided to delay these features.
During the meeting, Walker showed staff a few ways the new Siri already works, such as locating his driver\u2019s license number, finding specific photos of a child, and even manipulating apps precisely via voice control.
Still, this isn\u2019t the only feature Apple is developing to overcome this AI crisis. The company wants to make Siri more conversational by 2027, even though it will require new infrastructure.<\/p>\n