Do you remember the iPhone 16 ad, where Bella Ramsey asked her phone to remind her of the name of the person she had a meeting with a few months ago? You probably can’t be able to it before iPhone 17.
Apple confirmed on Friday (via Daring Fireball) that the new personalized Siri, who was originally expected to arrive at iOS 18.4, is then pushed back to iOS 18.5, now will not arrive until a while in the coming year. With WWDC only a few months away, it looks like the renewed Siri will be delayed until iOS 19 cycle and probably in an update from 2026.
The most important features that are delayed, according to Apple’s statement, are on screen awareness, personal context and app intentions, three of the most expected Apple Intelligence features. Awareness on screen lets Siri see and understand what’s on your screen so you can ask it to do something like “add this person to my contacts,” while personal context, as seen in the Ramsay ad above, lets Siri use his knowledge of the messages, events and other personal information on your device to help it provide information that is tailored.
But app intentions are probably the most disappointing feature that will miss the deadline. The feature allows you to intervene over different apps with Siri, something users have wanted for years. For example, Siri could retrieve flight information from a third -party app and send them to a friend with a single command.
Apple Intelligence has had an uneven rollout. None of the features were available when iOS 18 arrived in September and they have slowly rolled out in updates since. Apple temporarily deactivated its news overview feature earlier this year after a series of erroneous alarms, and also removed the Sketch setting from the Generation of Image Play Round. These SIRI features were always promised to come in an update for iOS 18, even when they were first announced at WWDC, but that did not prevent them from running ads for iPhone 16 that included the features. Now they are not available until at least the time iPhone 17 is on the shelves.
There is a reason why the delay was announced quietly and on a Friday after a week’s messages – it’s an embarrassing concession of how far behind Apple is at AI. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported earlier this week that the “conversation” Siri-based rival to Chatgpt and Gemini will not arrive until 2027. With this new delay, Apple is likely to play with as Google, Samsung and Openai in the years to come.