Apple’s top Siri exec calls AI crisis ‘ugly’ and ’embarrassing’

A week after Apple admitted that its revamped Siri with onscreen awareness and context understanding would be delayed with a release in the "coming year," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple's senior director at Siri's division, Robby Walker, had an all-hands meeting with his team, and said that delaying these key features has been "ugly" and "embarrassing."

More interestingly, the report reveals that the company had nothing more than a video mock-up of these features, as it had "a barely working prototype" during the WWDC 2024 keynote. With that, the top Apple executive said in the meeting that it's "unclear when the enhancement will actually launch."

Gurman reports: "During 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’t expected until next year at the earliest, people familiar with the matter have said."

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's executives took "intense personal accountability" for this PR crisis, Apple doesn't plan to "immediately fire any top executives," although this could change at any time.

Still, the journalist reveals the situation isn't 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's license number, finding specific photos of a child, and even manipulating apps precisely via voice control.

Still, this isn't 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.

The post Apple’s top Siri exec calls AI crisis ‘ugly’ and ’embarrassing’ appeared first on BGR.

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Apple’s top Siri exec calls AI crisis ‘ugly’ and ’embarrassing’ originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 14 Mar 2025 at 14:39:56 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.