Apple’s AI Siri Update Reportedly Facing Uphill Battle

Apple is reportedly floundering in its attempt to upgrade its artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistant.

The tech giant is holding its annual event this week, though investors are pessimistic about the chances of a major AI announcement, the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (June 8).

Recently departed employees told FT that Apple has been hit by challenges with updating Siri with the use of cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) that can provide more sophisticated responses to spoken prompts.

Apple has been trying to develop its own LLMs over the machine learning technology that powers Siri, a product used in hundreds of millions of its bestselling devices, to create a truly conversational assistant.

Former executives said that the process of integrating the technologies has led to bugs, something rivals like OpenAI did not face when building generative AI-based voice assistants.

“It was obvious that you were not going to revamp Siri by doing what executives called ‘climbing the hill,’” one former exec said, referring to the process of gradually developing the product instead of rebuilding it from scratch. “It’s clear that they stumbled.”

The FT also noted that updates to Siri form a major component of Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI features announced at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) last year and designed to increase hardware sales.

The report follows one from last week by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) about a host of problems facing Apple, leading to a 20% drop in its stock price, its worst performance in at least 15 years. Experts expect the WWDC to demonstrate how much Apple lags competitors in AI, that report said.

While rivals such as Microsoft and Google have used their developer events to highlight rapid progress in AI, Apple’s event could highlight how far it still has to go in AI.

“Apple will be much more cautious about overpromising and will refrain from showing features that aren’t yet ready for prime time,” said Craig Moffett of research firm MoffettNathanson.

However, AI is just one of several concerns. The company also faces tariffs that threaten its hardware profit margins. President Donald Trump is also pressuring Apple to alter its overseas production model — a supply chain strategy the company has employed for decades.

Meanwhile, the company’s services division, which drives gross profit margins of 74%, is facing legal scrutiny. Questions surround both App Store fees and payments Apple gets from Google for being its default search engine.