Siri has gained a new animation around the edge of iPhone screens but real improvements are much delayed
A new report claims that certain Apple Intelligence improvements to Siri have been delayed to May 2025, and that may take until 2027 before there is a significant update.
Siri was supposed to adopt Apple Intelligence features from iOS 18.4, but following rumors of delays, the first developer beta of that shipped without any Siri changes. It’s possible that the improvements will come in later rounds of the iOS 18.4 beta testing, but Bloomberg now says Apple is far behind on its AI plans.
The new claim is that Siri will now get the promised integration with Apple Intelligence in May 2025. This first round of improvements was seeming meant to be the one where, as in Apple’s now months-old ads, a user could ask Siri the name of someone they met before and it would read their calendar for the answer.
It’s not at all clear whether that type of feature will come in May, and there’s reason to doubt it since the report further says that Siri is for now remaining an unfinished hybrid of its old and new systems. So the Siri of old that could search the web, set timers and so on is said to be existing alongside the new, more AI-based system.
That fits with how in iOS 18.4 Siri will, with permission, pass user requests to ChatGPT — but fruitlessly. Siri is also now noticeably worse at its old strengths in the developer beta of iOS 18.4.
Reportedly, Apple plans to properly merge the two strands of Siri into a single system, but it now won’t do that until a version of iOS 19 that’s due in Spring 2026. More, it’s possible that there will not be any new user-facing Apple Intelligence features in any iteration of iOS 19.
That’s because the expectation now is that Apple will still be trying to get its initial Apple Intelligence promises working. If true, that means there will be solely behind-the-scenes improvements to Apple Intelligence until at least mid-2026 and quite possibly into 2027.
For WWDC 2025, Apple had also been expected to show off a more conversational form of Siri. That, too, is no longer believed to be ready by June and will have to be announced later.
The report posits that these delays Apple is already far behind its competitors, and in particular is being trounced by Amazon with its yet to launch updated Alexa.
