Apple's Big Siri Overhaul Reportedly Trips Up In Testing And Faces More Delays

When Apple and Google announced a massive deal that would see Apple use Google’s Gemini AI to train its own models, it seemed like the company was set to finally delivering on the promises it made all the way back in 2024. However, that initial optimism may have been wishful thinking, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Apple insider Mark Gurman.

Siri, Apple’s digital assistant, was supposed to get a big revamp powered by Gemini trained models beginning with iOS 26.4. However, the work on this new and improved Siri has “run into snags during testing in recent weeks,” likely forcing the company to delay its release yet again.

One of the key problems Apple is facing is that Siri struggles to process queries or will take a long time to handle a basic request or task. Moreover, testing has shown that Siri will cut off a user if they happen to be speaking too quickly. These issues mar the user experience, and are particularly disappointing since most competitors have been able to solve them in their own offerings.


Due to the recent setbacks, the new plan appears to be a more prolonged, incremental roll out, with new features spread out across future versions of iOS, beginning with iOS 26.5 if everything goes smoothly. Of course, judging by how the company’s AI rollout has gone up to this point, that’s a big if. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the new Siri doesn’t see the light of day until iOS 27, which should be released around September of this year.

At some point Apple may have to throw in the towel on its own AI. The company may be better off with a BYOAI, or Bring Your Own AI, philosophy where users can setup whatever personal assistant they want which tap into APIs built into iOS.