Apple Software Chief Craig Federighi Explains Why Personalized Siri Still Hasn’t Launched
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Apple’s senior VP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, recently sat down for a WWDC follow-up interview with Tom’s Guide editor-in-chief Mark Spoonauer and TechRadar editor-at-large Lance Ulanoff. During the interview, Federighi explained why “Personalized Siri” hasn’t yet made the scene.
While many thought Apple wouldn’t have much to say about Apple Intelligence during Monday’s WWDC25 keynote, the company unveiled several AI-powered as it debuted its new “26” lineup of operating systems. These included Live Translation, an expansion of Visual Intelligence to let it read your screen, new AI powers in the Shortcuts app, and more.
However, as expected, Personalized Siri was nowhere to be found. In fact, Apple conspicuously omitted its voice assistant from any of its presentations; Siri was mentioned by name only twice — both at the very beginning when Federighi recapped the debut of Apple Intelligence at least year’s WWDC and acknowledged that the work on “the features that make Siri even more personal” needs “more time to reach our high quality bar.”
Federighi expanded on those comments during this interview, adding that the first-generation AI architecture that Apple developed for personalized Siri features was too limited to allow the promised features to meet the Cupertino company’s high-quality standards. Apple a few months ago, Apple decided to move Siri to a second-generation architecture it’s developing. The decision resulted in the promised features being delayed for up to another year.
We found that the limitations of the V1 architecture weren’t getting us to the quality level that we knew our customers needed and expected…if we tried to push that out in the state it was going to be in, it would not meet our customer expectations or Apple standards and we had to move to the V2 architecture.
Craig Federighi
Federighi said that Apple is still working to perfect the Siri features. Apple’s marketing chief Greg Joswiak chimed in, confirming that when Apple says “in the coming year,” it means 2026, making it likely that the features will make an appearance in an iOS 26 update next year.
However, Apple won’t announce a date until the updated Siri is ready for prime time.
“We will announce the date when we’re ready to seed it, and you’re all ready to be able to experience it,” said Federighi.
Apple is facing multiple class action lawsuits, both in the United States and Canada over the delayed Personalized Siri features, which the company promoted heavily last year.
Apple showed off the Siri features in a WWDC 2024 presentation last June and promoted it heavily, both on its website and even in a TV advertising campaign starring actor Bella Ramsey. The commercial showed a Siri that had improved understanding of a user’s personal context, on-screen awareness, and deep per-app controls.
While all these new features were never expected to be available at iOS 18’s initial fall release, they were supposed to debut in an update somewhere during the life of iOS 18 — reliable insider reports said that would possibly be as late as iOS 18.4, but that would still technically make them part of iOS 18.
However, we never saw the release of these features, and Apple earlier this year admitted it was experiencing difficulties with the promised features and that there would be a longer delay due to the need for additional development time.
Apple says its AI strategy isn’t to build a chatbot. Instead, the company wants to “meet people where they are” with AI.
For example. Federighi and Joswiak discussed Live Translate in Messages, the Phone app, and FaceTime. When someone sends you a message in a language different from yours, Live Translate will offer to start translating for you.
“It’s integrated so it’s there within reach whenever you need it in the way you need it with it being contextually relevant and having access to the tools necessary to accomplish what you want to accomplish at that moment,” said Federighi.
“Apple’s job is to figure out the right experiences that make sense in the context of what we offer to customers and to make that technology,” said Joswiak. “The features that you’re seeing in Apple Intelligence isn’t a destination for us. There’s no app on intelligence. [It’s about] making all the things you do every day better.”
