A giant among giants, Apple has impressed with its dominance in the tech world for many years. A force has emerged since the advent of the iPhone, and almost nothing seems to be able to shake the Apple brand's success. This almost could be Siri, a voice assistant that has become too cumbersome and is the cause of an explosive internal meeting in Cupertino.
There's been a stone in Apple's shoe for many months: artificial intelligence. Thanks to its consistently impeccable communication and a sense of integration that still makes its competitors dream, Apple maintains the illusion that it's not behind in the field of AI. The announcement of Apple Intelligence is the perfect example, showing a company that is ultimately far from being left behind in this field, but for a while too wait-and-see to succeed in fully convincing us. At WWDC 2024, the Cupertino company promised a new "revolution" of its own making with an AI-enhanced version of Siri. From a simple voice assistant, Siri would become the super-assistant and symbol of Apple's offensive against its AI competitors.
"Hey Siri," how to make a revolution with AI?
To enter a new era, Siri should rely on Apple Intelligence to integrate "even deeper into the system". "With even richer language understanding capabilities, Siri is more natural, more contextually aware, and more personal, and is able to simplify and speed up everyday tasks. It can compensate if users stumble on certain words and maintain context from one request to the next," the Californian company stated last year. Nearly a year later, and while AI from Google, Microsoft, Open AI, and even Amazon are progressing, the new Siri is not here.
In early March, Apple finally confirmed that the new version of Siri was not ready. This news disrupts the Apple brand's plans and plunges the company into embarrassment, as evidenced by the latest revelations from Mark Gurman. Always very well informed, the Bloomberg journalist reports that a crisis meeting was held at Apple, during which Robby Walker, senior director responsible for Siri, made alarming statements. A senior director at Apple and responsible for Siri, described the situation as "ugly" and "embarrassing" for the company. A rare situation at Apple that reflects a deep unease within the development teams.
Hard-to-keep promises and a worrying delay
Journalist John Gruber, a great Apple expert, has already sounded the alarm, claiming that Apple has sold a story that isn't true regarding artificial intelligence. During the internal meeting, Robby Walker acknowledged that the decision to publicly promote a technology before it was ready only made things worse. He also said that he wasn't sure when the expected improvements would actually be launched, which was enough to raise concerns in Cupertino.
This discussion shows the extent of the cracks running through Apple in the field of AI, and Robby Walker suggests that employees on his team may "feel angry, disappointed, exhausted, and embarrassed" after the feature delays. The executive, however, is trying to stay the course and congratulates his team for developing features that are already "incredibly impressive". It's not certain that this will be enough to maintain confidence, especially since Robby Walker explains that the new Siri's features crash "one in three times".
What impact on Apple?
In France, the arrival of the iPhone 16 without Apple Intelligence was already a major blow. The American company can count on its image to stay the course, but the difficulties are starting to grate on the experts' nerves. Apple is used to relying on the trust of its users, and the latest feedback paints a worrying picture of the situation at Apple regarding the development of Apple Intelligence and the redesign of Siri.
Faced with rapidly advancing competition, Apple will have to redouble its efforts to achieve its ambitions. The next few months promise to be interesting for the company, which will need AI features to support the release of the iPhone 17.
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