The Long Wait
Apple CEO Tim Cook says the long awaited Apple Intelligence boosted Siri will arrive on time in 2026, suggesting that Apple's delayed AI ambitions are back on track. But "on time" is a euphemism. Recently, under mounting pressure from outraged consumers and industry scrutiny, Apple was forced to acknowledge that the heralded Apple Intelligence features, including the Siri enhancements that fueled the greatest consumer excitement, did not exist then and do not exist now. Worse, Apple has admitted that if these features ever materialize, it won't be until 2026—two years after its pervasive marketing campaign built on a lie.
What's Actually Coming
Apple initially planned to launch the personalized Siri features in iOS 18.4, so after the year-long delay to fix the architecture, we could see the functionality introduced in an iOS 26.4 update sometime in March or April 2026. The Apple Intelligence Siri features that we are waiting on include personal context, on-screen awareness, and deeper integration with apps.
The Google Partnership
Apple is partnering with Google and plans to use a custom AI model built in collaboration with Google's Gemini team for some of the new Siri features, including the Siri chatbot functionality that's coming.
The Real Story
The enhanced Siri was delayed because the company found that it only worked properly about two-thirds of the time. The company passed the blame around a fair amount, and even wound up doing a bit of corporate reshuffling.
My Take: This is a humbling moment for Apple. The company that invented the marketing-driven product cycle just demonstrated the limits of pre-announcement hype. Two years is an eternity in AI. What Apple promised in 2024 is now table-stakes, not revolutionary. The Google partnership is pragmatic—why spend billions on AGI when Google's already solved context-aware inference? The real question: can Siri be culturally cool again after this much failure theater?