A year ago, Apple promised the earth for Siri. Powered by AI, the assistant would dig into user data and "read" the iPhone screen to better understand the context, all in order to respond accurately and pertinently to questions. We were about to see what we were going to see! We mostly saw... nothing at all. Apple postponed these functions until better days, causing an internal crisis in the process.
Siri, where are you?
What remains of this industrial disaster? A beautiful video demo broadcast during the WWDC 2024 keynote, an ad broadcast in maximum rotation that was discreetly deleted, many questions about the Apple company's delay in AI, and a justified accusation of vaporware. No one outside of Apple has ever been able to test this new Siri.
This vaporware description, originally applied by blogger John Gruber, has really stung Apple. And that probably explains why Apple executives have been avoiding the talk show it traditionally hosts during WWDC week—a show they've been participating in since 2015.
Craig Federighi, the software company's chief executive, and Greg Joswiak, the marketing director, have, however, answered questions from several media outlets, starting with the Wall Street Journal. And there's no mention of vaporware. When asked by Joanna Stern of the WSJ if there was a working version of the new Siri, Federighi replied: "What you saw was real software in operation, with a real language model, and real semantic search." Jozwiak, for his part, assured that "there's this idea going around that it was just a fake demo. No!"
Please take their word for it, of course, because there's still no talk of showing the new version of the assistant. Jozawiak promises that Siri works as it did in last year's demo, but that the error rate is too high. Has he even tested the current Siri? Craig Federighi adds:
"We had something that worked, but as soon as we went a little bit off the beaten track—and with Siri, we know that the requests can be very varied, as can the personal data available on the device—well, we wanted it to be really, really reliable. And we weren't able to achieve that level of reliability in the timeframe we set."
The two executives gave further technical explanations to TechRadar. Apple is actually working on two Siri architectures in parallel: V1, the version presented at WWDC 2024, functional, but limited; and V2, a more ambitious redesign, designed to deliver the quality expected by Apple users.
The team initially thought they could deliver V1 by the end of 2024, or even in spring 2025. But as development progressed, it became clear that V1 wouldn't hold up to the company's quality standards. Apple therefore decided to switch entirely to V2, which was more consistent, more powerful... but still incomplete. "As soon as we realized that this was the right path, we decided to abandon V1 and not release something that didn't meet our standards," Federighi explains. The software vice president adds that "we won't make that mistake again: we won't communicate a date in advance until we have, internally, a version that truly reaches the expected level of quality." This also explains why the WWDC 25 keynote seemed a shade below Apple's traditional hyperbole.
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