Apple's "ugly and embarrassing" AI debacle is causing tension in the company

A strange and unwelcome byproduct of the AI era has been the advent of products arriving without all of their promised features available at launch. From the Rabbit R1 to the Humane Pin, we've seen plenty of gadgets land with headline features set to follow in subsequent software updates. It's a dodgy practice that rarely pays off (RIP, Humane) – so it's particularly surprising to see Apple leaning into it too.

Apple Intelligence was announced with great fanfare this year, promising, among other things, to completely overhaul the iPhone's tired old voice assistant, Siri. But not only has Apple been forced to concede that Siri's improvements are taking longer than planned, but the whole debacle is said to be causing tension in the company itself.

According to Bloomberg, details of a leaked internal meeting at Apple include Siri senior director Robby Walker calling the situation "ugly and embarrassing". And while the features were hoped to be ready in time for iOS 19, the meeting apparently suggested even that isn't guaranteed.

Last week, Apple announced in a statement that the Siri features were taking longer than planned. "Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT," the company told Daring Fireball. "We’ve also been working on a more personalised Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”

Another intriguing aspect of the leaked meeting is how, according to The Verge, it hints at tension in the company, with the advertising and communications team keen to showcase features at last year's WWDC, even though these were "nowhere near ready". Walker acknowledges that Apple's own teases of the software have made matters worse by raising expectations. And with Apple last week pulling an ad showcasing the features, it seems the tension between Apple's marketing and software teams isn't set to abate any time soon.

Time will tell whether Apple Intelligence turns out to justify the wait, but right now the whole thing is continuing to bemuse the tech world.