Apple says some AI improvements to Siri delayed to 2026

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) - Some artificial intelligence improvements to Apple's voice assistant Siri will be delayed until 2026, the company said on Friday.

In a statement, Apple said it has "been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year."

Apple did not give a reason for the delays. The iPhone maker had previously indicated the features would come in 2025.

Last year, Apple announced a range of AI-driven features called Apple Intelligence that included new capabilities such as rewriting emails and summarizing a cluttered inbox.

Some of the biggest improvements were aimed at giving its Siri assistant the ability to duck in and out of apps and complete tasks for a user by tapping into information stored on Apple devices.

Apple gave examples such as asking Siri to pull up a podcast recommended by a friend or pulling up flight tracking information from a relative, all based on data held on the device.

The company has been building a vast new cloud computing infrastructure that runs on its own chips in an effort to maintain its privacy stance while delivering AI features. Apple has said Siri fields 1.5 billion user requests per day.

Apple's rivals have also been rushing to add AI features to their voice assistants, with Alphabet's Google adding its Gemini model to its assistant last year.

Amazon last month rolled out an AI-driven overhaul of its Alexa assistant, saying that the new capabilities would be free for subscribers to its Prime program but cost $19.99 a month otherwise.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Nia Williams)