Cook Reassures Us That Siri’s AI Future Is Still on Track
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Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed this week that the company’s revamped Siri virtual personal assistant is on track for a 2026 launch and that additional AI partnerships are definitely on the table. Cook’s comments came in an interview with CNBC’s Steve Kovach, just ahead of yesterday’s fiscal Q4 earnings announcement.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software, has stated from the start that ChatGPT was just one of the AI extensions Apple plans to integrate with Apple Intelligence. However, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed the two companies are in talks to add Google’s Gemini, Apple has yet to officially confirm a partnership with Google or any other AI company. When CNBC brought the subject up with Cook, he stopped short of providing details, merely saying that Apple’s “intention is to integrate with more people over time.”
Nevertheless, Apple has been quietly working on expanding support for third-party models in Image Playground, starting with new ChatGPT styles in iOS 26. Apple has also been laying the foundations in iOS 26.1 for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) framework — an open standard developed by Anthropic that facilitates interoperability between AI models, tools, and apps and has already been adopted by other firms.
Why Siri’s Big AI Upgrade Is Taking So Long
Cook’s hints come amid ongoing criticism over Apple’s slow AI rollout. The new capabilities would enable Siri to better understand the personal context of a user’s request, provide on-screen awareness, and offer deeper control of apps on an app-by-app basis.
Apple first announced “Personalized Siri” during the keynote at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2024. An Apple demonstration showed an iPhone user asking Siri about a parent’s flight and lunch reservations, with replies all based on information obtained from the user’s Mail and Messages apps. However, shortly before the new features were expected to arrive in early 2025, the Cupertino firm announced that the Siri improvements were being delayed.
Following this year’s WWDC event in June, Federighi explained that the first-generation AI architecture Apple had developed to power the revamped Siri features was too limited to meet the company’s high-quality standards for the promised features. Apple had made the decision to move Siri to a second-generation architecture currently under development, which could take as long as another year.
In addition to extending AI-related deadlines, Apple has also been dealing with an exodus of its AI talent to other companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and other AI firms.
Apple is also now facing at least two class action lawsuits over the delayed Siri features.
One of those cases, filed in March, seeks class-action status on behalf of customers who say they were misled by Apple’s marketing, looking for “unspecified financial damages on behalf of those who purchased Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones and other devices.”
The lawsuit also points to Apple’s September 2024 ad starring The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey, which Apple later pulled after announcing that the more advanced Siri would not arrive on schedule.
While Cook’s comments were likely meant to reassure users about Apple’s AI roadmap, they also serve as a reminder of how little visible progress the company has made so far. Still, Apple’s openness to new partnerships suggests Apple is determined to build the ecosystem that will eventually bring its next-generation Siri to life.
