'Clock Has Struck Midnight' on Apple's AI Strategy, Dan Ives

Dan Ives, Global Head: Technology Research at Wedbush Securities, talks about his note on Apple trying to avoid its "Blackberry Moment."

Apple’s decision to delay its next-generation Siri features this year set off a storm inside the company, leading to executive changes and underscoring to the public just how far behind the company is in artificial intelligence.

But here’s the thing: The uproar over the delays largely missed the biggest reason to be disappointed. Many Apple watchers lamented that Siri wouldn’t be able to tap into personal information to better handle requests — say, by finding a particular file sent from a friend, locating a song that was texted to you, or surfacing your driver’s license number from your photos.

This capability was the star of Siri’s demo at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, with Apple showing the voice assistant pulling information from across texts, emails and maps to construct an itinerary. The Siri feature also was in a now-pulled TV advertisement with Bella Ramsey that got Apple sued for false advertising.

So it was unfortunate when this feature was delayed, but — in my view — it’s not the biggest deal. The real game changer, one Apple barely mentioned, is an upgraded version of App Intents that could finally make Siri the true hands-free controller of your iPhone.

Here’s what the new App Intents will mean: With nothing but your voice, you’ll be able to tell Siri to find a specific photo, edit it and send it off. Or comment on an Instagram post. Or scroll a shopping app and add something to your cart. Or log in to a service without touching the screen. Essentially, Siri could operate your apps like you would — with precision, inside their own interfaces.

If Apple nails this, it’s not just a nice ease-of-use upgrade — it’s the fulfillment of the vision Siri promised nearly 15 years ago. And it’s the key to Apple’s next hardware developments. The company’s upcoming home devices (a smart display set for next year and a tabletop robot after that) will rely on this tech to function naturally.

Without the new App Intents, those products would potentially be even less compelling than the devices that Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google launched half a decade ago. That’s why the Siri delay has rippled through the company’s other product plans. It’s already led to the smart display being pushed back an entire year.

Apple knows what’s at stake. Internally, testing and perfecting this feature has become a top priority for its global data operations team, the same group that compares Siri and Apple Intelligence outputs to raw data, hunting for errors and providing information for potential fixes. Apple doesn’t want to be in the news again for overpromising and under-delivering.

The plan now is to ship the feature alongside a broader Siri infrastructure overhaul in the spring and market it heavily. But there’s some concern inside the company, I’m told. Engineers have been struggling to ensure that the system works with a sufficient number of apps and is accurate enough to handle high-stakes scenarios. There are worries about the software failing in categories where precision is nonnegotiable, like in health or banking apps.

For years, users have struggled with Siri not understanding them. It’s annoying but not critical if your phone misunderstands the city you want a weather report from or tries to navigate you to the wrong restaurant. But letting the Siri brain of today control all of your apps would obviously be a lot riskier.

That’s why Apple is waiting on the new Siri and won’t roll it out universally on day one. Testing is underway with select third-party apps, including Uber, AllTrails, Threads, Temu, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and even a few games, in addition to Apple’s own apps. For banking and other sensitive categories, Apple is considering sharply limiting what Siri can do — or excluding those areas altogether.

This isn’t just about making Siri smarter. It’s about giving Apple’s ecosystem a new, voice-first interface.

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