this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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  • Apple's progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been slow, and features promised in June remain delayed.
  • At a Siri team meeting, senior director Robby Walker acknowledged the frustration within the team, describing the delays as "ugly."
  • Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
  • Challenges include quality issues that caused these features to malfunction up to a third of the time and conflicts with Apple's marketing division over showcasing incomplete features.
  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.
  • Senior executives, including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, are reportedly taking personal accountability for the delays.
  • Walker emphasized that the team’s work is impressive and that the delayed features will be released once they meet Apple’s standards.
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[–] thisphuckinguy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago

Terrible voice assistant. I preferred Google assistant, but even that is becoming slow.

[–] roguesignal@lemm.ee 1 points 6 minutes ago

Siri is so useless. All these years and I use her to basically set timers and reminders.

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

‘It’s still in development’ doesn’t strike me as “dire.”

[–] Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 minutes ago (1 children)

Dire as in, it was supposed to ship 6 months ago as the highlight of the iPhone 16 series.

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 0 points 9 minutes ago

Dear god!! The end is nigh!!

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
  • Take screenshot of screen
  • Send screenshot to Claude 3.7 or any other decent chatbot. Even GPT-3 is light years smarter than current Siri, but I don’t know it if can analyze images
  • Run Claude’s response through a text-to-Siri-speech layer

There, now Siri can see your screen. Why can’t Apple accomplish this? Why are megacorps so inept?

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago

Spend 5 minutes creating a bash script

Spend 5 billion dollars on an overly complicated summarizer

Why the fuck would I wanna write bash

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

This whole thing is a textbook example of how bad shady marketing today and can really cause you a lot of pain tomorrow. If Apple had not been so quick to let PR write checks their ass was not ready to cash the conversation around Siri would still just be the casual jokes about it sucking, and not more serious public blackeyes.

"Taking personal accountablility", but not a paycheck.

[–] drperil@lemm.ee 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

That is not going to happen.

[–] drperil@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago

Def not, but I’ll keep day dreaming :)

[–] midori_matcha@lemmy.world 25 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Apple Intelligence hasn't been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually "Siri" rather than "Hey Siri"), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 points 45 minutes ago

Honestly I don’t really want a smart context-aware Siri, I just want something I can give simple, straightforward voice commands to, and get predictable, reliable results.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting timing, where I’m seeing the opposite. All my Amazon devices suddenly can’t turn on a simple light switch, and one appears to have somehow factory reset.

However Siri works perfectly. I use a button rather than wake word, but then it dies actually turn on my light

[–] fishy@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It's been theorized that Amazon is progressively making all Alexa devices worse so they can sell you on a subscription based AI version.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Maybe, but they may lose more customers than they expect ….

There are privacy based devices for “always listening” voice assistants coming on strong

I already use Siri with a button for a lot. recently it seems able to recognize more of my smarthome devices and it will now prompt to forward more complex queries to ChatGPT

I’m really down to the intercom feature being the only reason to keep Alexa - I can’t control the devices my kids use at their mom’s house

[–] ileanallama@lemmy.world 66 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

There stock would fall. I don't care but investors would fear Apple is missing out on the future.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 23 points 18 hours ago

Hell, if they genuinely do that, I might even consider switching sides.

[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 19 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

What is the question. AI or LLM definitely has its uses and is here to stay. Is it the answer to everything, no.

[–] turnip@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

AI can make me a video of the brave little toaster suplexing Putin, to sit on that kind of power is silly.

[–] RichardDegenne@lemm.ee 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] derpgon@programming.dev 14 points 9 hours ago

LLMs are the question, "no" is the answer.

[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 38 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

I don't fucking want AI in my phone, so take it out and be done with it.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

You've had AI on your phone for ages. All your pictures are "AI" touched. And no you don't want the raw output cameras in phones are not that good.

[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I was just fine without voice assistants and such. I especially don't want LLMs being shoved down my throat at every turn.

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[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 246 points 1 day ago (11 children)

This is what happens when you get pressure to please shareholders instead of customers. Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time. But caught with their pants down during the AI hype, they fell into the trap so many other tech companies do. (Tesla is the undisputed heavyweight champ here)

Now that they’ve been burned by all this, here’s hoping they learn from it and return to form.

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 66 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time.

I'm not so sure about that. MobileMe, iTunes Ping, Vision Pro, and AirPower (their wireless charging pad) come to mind.

"You're holding it wrong"

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 62 points 1 day ago (1 children)

All of these things except the AirPad were released at about the same time they were announced. That’s what I was getting at.

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 8 points 21 hours ago

While they did get released when they said, they didn't get released in the state that was stated/indicated though.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 9 points 21 hours ago

I don't think tech companies got caught with their pants down, they just hit the far end of the S curve regarding growth.

A lot of other "tech" companies in the past saw massive leaps in tech capabilities, then hit a wall once tech got to a certain level. Computing has hit its wall.

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[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 160 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The whole industry is a shit show right now with the "AI race"

I don't want to be a software developer anymore because it's become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

We just had a town hall with our CEO and they came right out and said we need to simultaneously add AI and not add AI to our products, because customers are both excited and nervous about it. Our competitors are putting "AI" everywhere in their marketing, while we're just trucking along making a quality product.

Our software works in a very dangerous environment, where mistakes could cost millions in damage and potentially risk human lives. So the end user just sees "AI" as a liability. But the decision makers as to what product to use are removed from conditions on the ground and respond well to marketing BS.

We actually do use AI with some parts of the product (e.g. curve fitting on past data for better predictions), but we need to be very careful about how we advertise that.

It's dumb. Just pick the product based on what fits your operations best, don't pick based on buzzwords...

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago

Our software works in a very dangerous environment, where mistakes could cost millions in damage and potentially risk human lives.

I mean attorneys don't seem to have a problem submitting case law that AI hallucinated.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

An AI age in software development will yield massive returns to anybody who makes it to "senior designer-developer" by the end of this decade, IMHO, if only because the totally fucked up unmantainable code bases made by "automated junior developers" will much more quickly reach end of life (the point were it costs more to try and fix/upgrade them than to rewrite them) and need to replaced (and the way to do that is to reverse engineer the Software Requirements from the existing apps an then build from scratch something new that satisfies those requirements, something which LLMs are entirelly unable to do).

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[–] Cocopanda@futurology.today 6 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I can careless for Ai Siri. There’s no real need. I barely use Siri anyways.

[–] NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I think the phrase is "I couldn't care less".

[–] TK420@lemmy.world -2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I know the phrase is “I couldn’t care less”

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago

The phrase is "i could care less but i dont"

[–] PeteZa@lemm.ee 3 points 16 hours ago

I only use it for voice controls.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

A while ago I set up a Siri shortcut that opens ChatGPT in voice mode. Now I can just say “hey siri, ask the demon” and in a moment start talking to ChatGPT with no further commands and zero buttons pressed throughout. It answers in voice mode.

This is pretty useful for things like doing units conversions while my hands are sticky during cooking, or just doing simple information lookups while my hands are busy. I use ChatGPT responsibly, never trusting it for things that aren’t one-dimensional information retrievals and summarization. It works great for me for like 50-60% of the things I used to Google. Internet search is, once again, just for finding websites, like it should be.

What’s my point? We don’t need Siri Apple Intelligence to ship. There’s already something better. And it runs on my iPhone 14, which isn’t even compatible with Apple Flatulence.

[–] invertedspear@lemm.ee 16 points 20 hours ago

I’ve never used Apple intelligence and Siri alone has done a fine job for unit conversions, info lookups, and most any other things. No need to fire up chat GPT for those basic uses

[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 49 points 1 day ago (3 children)

How is this bad news? Dire situation?? They are not where they want to be with this “feature” so they delay it. Sounds like a smart move. Probably second best option to just dropping it

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