• Apple has announced that its AI-powered Siri has been delayed to 2026.
• This is a more than a year and half wait time for a product promised during the launch of Apple Intelligence.
• The new Siri would have been an agentic software, using the iPhone at the command of the user.

The launch of Apple Intelligence, the AI-powered up software of Apple’s operating systems, has been problematic to say the least. It was hit with delay after delay, finally launching at the end of 2024 around half a year after it was first revealed.

It came even later in South Africa, but while most of the promised AI features are here, like ChatGPT integration, image creation, magic editing and more, one of the big promises made in the initial announcement is still far in the offing.

This is the new and improved “smarter” Siri, with Apple announcing in June 2024 that Siri would become agentic through the power of generative AI, giving an example that you could ask Siri to book flights for you through your iPhone or reply to messages.

“With richer language-understanding capabilities, Siri is more natural, more contextually relevant, and more personal, with the ability to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks,” Apple described last year.

“It can follow along if users stumble over words and maintain context from one request to the next. Additionally, users can type to Siri, and switch between text and voice to communicate with Siri in whatever way feels right for the moment.”

A user could say, “Bring up that article about cicadas from my Reading List,” or “Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia,” and Siri will “take care of it.” Apple says.

But this isn’t going to be happening for a long time, according to reports, per a statement from Apple released earlier this week, the AI-powered up Siri will only be rolling out “in the coming year” which means at some point in 2026. Around a year and a half after being touted as an inclusion in first version of Apple Intelligence that was used to sell many, many Apple products, including the iPhone 16 series.

Analysts believe that Apple needs to take more accountability and provide more concrete answers for users as it hasn’t even explained why the new Siri has been delayed in such a way leaving publications to speculate.

For example, as described by MacRumours, during the antennagate scandal with the iPhone 4 which saw the handset lose signal if it was held in a certain way leading to dropped calls for customers, Steve Jobs at that time personally responded to multiple customer emails, explaining the root of the problem and even announced that Apple would provide free bumpers for all iPhone 4s to mitigate the issue.

Will Tim Cook do the same for to very delayed Siri promise? Likely not.