Apple's Siri Overhaul: Internal Struggles and Leadership Changes Revealed

This is how Apple's big Siri shake-up happened, per report - 9to5Mac

Wayne Ma at The Information has published a detail-packed report outlining how Apple "fumbled Siri's AI makeover." There are a lot of looks into the behind-the-scenes pulse of Apple employees throughout the last couple years of AI and Siri development. For example, Ma notes that Apple's struggles in AI seem partly tired to the company's "militant stance on user privacy," but just as significant is poor leadership. Ma writes: More than half a dozen former Apple employees who worked in the AI and machine-learning group led by Giannandrea -- known as AI/ML for short -- told The Information that poor leadership is to blame for its problems with execution. They singled out [Robby] Walker as lacking both ambition and an appetite for taking risks on designing future versions of the voice assistant. Among engineers inside Apple, the AI group's relaxed culture and struggles with execution have even earned it an uncharitable nickname, a play on its initials: AIMLess. The "AIMLess" nickname says a lot about how many at Apple seem to have perceived its AI team. Apple has gotten a lot of flack for demoing AI features last year at WWDC that seemingly didn't even have working prototypes. Ma's report confirms that suspicion. Regarding Apple's Siri demo where the assistant is asked about her mom's flight landing and lunch plans, he writes: Among members of the Siri team at Apple, though, the demonstration was a surprise. They had never seen working versions of the capabilities, according to a former Apple employee. At the time, the only new feature from the demonstration that was activated for test devices was a pulsing, colorful ribbon that appeared on the edges of the iPhone's screen when a user invoked Siri, the former employee said. It's pretty shocking that Siri's new design was, per this report at least, the only new feature that was ready for testing within Apple last June. With that in mind, it's almost surprising the company was able to even ship the new Siri features that it did in iOS 18.1 and 18.2. For Apple, the Siri demo was a break from its past practice. Historically, Apple would only show features and products at its conferences that were already working on test devices and that its marketing team had vetted to ensure they could be released on time. One major theme throughout is that there seems to be much more optimism within Apple that Siri is in good hands now. Federighi and Rockwell seem to be viewed internally as leaders who get things done, and have strong track records of shipping. Not only that, Federighi's software team has apparently built up its own sort of AI division -- 'Intelligent Systems' -- that's seen as responsible for many of the Apple Intelligence features that have shipped. While the AI/ML team continues to operate under Giannandrea, the piece hints that more clashes between Federighi and Giannandrea's teams could await. Also, Ma closes with a fascinating tidbit: Federighi has reportedly already changed one big AI policy. Whereas Apple engineers previously had been directed to build features only using internal models, now using open-source third-party models has been given the green light.

Craig Federighi's leadership has already resulted in this major Siri pivot, per report - 9to5Mac

Today a revealing new look into Apple's recent Siri struggles was published at The Information. That report contains myriad details on internal drama and conflicts, but it also ends with a big piece of news: under Craig Federighi's leadership, for the first time Apple engineers can now use third-party LLMs to build Siri features. Wayne Ma writes at The Information: Federighi has already shaken things up. In a departure from previous policy, he has instructed Siri's machine-learning engineers to do whatever it takes to build the best AI features, even if it means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple's own models, according to a person familiar with the matter. According to the report, until the recent Siri leadership changes, Apple engineers could only use third-party LLMs to benchmark them against their own in-house models during testing. For additional context, engineers apparently did a lot of experimentation with OpenAI's models but were restricted from actually using them in shipping features. Ma writes: "Apple managers told their engineers in 2023 they couldn't include models from outside companies in final Apple products." Building these models was mostly the responsibility of Giannandrea's team. This frustrated members of the software group who wanted to build AI-powered features but found that Apple's models "didn't perform nearly as well as OpenAI's technology." Now, under Federighi's leadership, it seems that all open-source LLMs are on the table for Apple's engineers. This seems like a great move for users, who only care about getting the best Siri features possible -- not so much the underlying technology that's powering those features. There are a lot more details in the full The Information report, a variety of which you can find here. What do you think about this Siri pivot for Apple? Let us know in the comments.

Tim Cook approved big AI investment in 2023, but Luca Maestri slashed it: NYT - 9to5Mac

The behind the scenes journalistic recaps of Apple's AI drama continues today at The New York Times. And in this latest report, blame for Apple's struggles to compete in AI is assigned to a surprising source: Luca Maestri and budget. Today Tripp Mickle at The New York Times has published a wide-ranging report outlining Apple's struggles in AI, Siri, the Vision Pro, and more. It covers much of the same ground as yesterday's The Information report, but there is an especially interesting new tidbit around Apple's slow AI start. John Giannandrea, Apple's AI head, reportedly sought approval in early 2023 to upgrade the company's GPU arsenal and faced some pushback. Tripp Mickle writes at The New York Times: At the time, Apple's data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old -- far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by A.I. leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, these people said. Mr. Cook approved a plan to double the team's chip budget, but Apple's finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said. Mr. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient. It seems remarkable that Maestri would be able to have such a huge impact on Apple's AI efforts. Especially considering Cook gave his own approval. Mickle continues: The lack of GPUs meant the team developing A.I. systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said. The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its A.I. development. Maestri is Apple's longtime CFO who recently stepped into a reduced role, likely as part of a slow retirement plan. While Maestri's oversight of Apple's finances makes him an important voice in the decision to increase GPU investment, it's wild that such a seemingly short-sighted move happened so recently. Apple's growing R&D spend over the years, the importance of AI, and the company's huge cash flow all make a simple budget dispute seem hard to believe. Not that this one decision can be entirely blamed for Apple's slow AI uptake, of course. Mickle also highlights leadership struggles between Robby Walker, who formerly led Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive in software. However, such a big scale back on what Giannandrea was asking for seems like an especially big error, in hindsight. How much do you think this GPU budget reduction hurt Apple's AI efforts? Let us know in the comments.

Apple has apparently screwed up Siri so badly that the team working on it has a special nickname within the company

A deep dive into Apple's ongoing struggles to rebuild Siri has revealed myriad details on the internal drama between high profile leaders within the company. Reporting by The Information's Wayne Ma's reporting contains a detailed timeline of how Apple got to the point of publicly announcing that Siri 2.0 would be delayed into 2026. On a high level, the problem appears to be a conflict of managerial styles and backroom ambition between different teams within Apple. Siri has been under the purview of John Giannandrea, formerly of Google, since 2018. He was hired to run a new AI group which included Siri. Reportedly, Siri engineers already felt like "second-class citizens" at Apple, a problem that was made worse as they struggled to keep with iOS updates and features being released by Craig Federighi's software group. Federighi was placed in charge of the Siri overhaul in March, alongside his number two Mike Rockwell -- who created the Apple Vision Pro headset -- as Apple attempts to revive its Siri revamp. The difference between Giannandrea and Federighi appears to be the difference between the tortoise and the hare. John is allegedly more of a listener and slow mover who lets those underneath him take charge of the work, especially his number two Robby Walker. He reportedly preferred incremental updates and was repeatedly cited as a problem with Siri development. Meanwhile, Federighi is described as brash and quick but very efficient and knowledgeable. Supposedly, Giannandrea's "relaxed culture" lead to other engineers dubbing his AI team: AIMLess. Surprisingly, according to The Information, most of what we know of as Apple Intelligence is thanks to the software team led by Federighi. His software group had its own AI team, which reportedly absorbed more AI responsibilities and built within the existing systems. This was not appreciated by the Siri team, who often felt left out. But the Siri team was apparently very slow to make progress. In fact, The Information report says it took two whole years for Walker to remove "hey" form the "hey Siri" voice command. What Apple demoed for Siri during Apple's WWDC 2024 event is what's been delayed. This includes Siri's personal context understanding, onscreen awareness and in-app actions. The demos including asking Siri when mom's flight would land, and the voice assistant accessed the person's email and real-time flight data to provide the updated arrival time. Siri will also be able to access key info from your text messages, such as providing details of your lunch plans and offering directions. Ma claims that internally there is optimism that Federighi can turn things around and deliver these features. It's been reported before, but Apple has an almost maniacal dedication to privacy when it comes to its iPhones and data. This has lead to things like a struggle within the company on building AI models for Apple Intelligence using third-party LLMs like ChatGPT or its own internal models that wouldn't have access to the same, generally stolen, datasets that OpenAI uses. One of the first things Federighi did upon taking over the Siri team was to let engineers access third-party AI. Ma writes: In a departure from previous policy, he has instructed Siri's machine-learning engineers to do whatever it takes to build the best AI features, even if it means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple's own models, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Information reports that previously Apple's machine-learning engineers were only allowed to use third-party models as a benchmark for their in-house LLMs. A problem when apparently the in-house models were routinely outpaced by OpenAI's tech. The crew Federighi has assembled, including Rockwell and Kim Vorrath are known within Apple for getting projects to the finish line in a timely and efficient manner. Having only just taken over the Siri overhaul, it will still be some time before we see what they're able to do with Apple's voice assistant. Will they beat the 2026 timeline as Federighi attempts to get the "best AI features" into Apple Intelligence? We'll be watching for signs of progress at WWDC 2025.

Report Reveals Internal Chaos Behind Apple's Siri Failure

A new report from The Information today reveals much of the internal turmoil behind Apple Intelligence's revamped version of Siri. Apple apparently weighed up multiple options for the backend of Apple Intelligence. One initial idea was to build both small and large language models, dubbed "Mini Mouse" and "Mighty Mouse," to run locally on iPhones and in the cloud, respectively. Siri's leadership then decided to go in a different direction and build a single large language model to handle all requests via the cloud, before a series of further technical pivots. The indecision and repeated changes in direction reportedly frustrated engineers and prompted some members of staff to leave Apple. In addition to Apple's deeply ingrained stance on privacy, conflicting personalities within Apple contributed to the problems. More than half a dozen former employees who worked in Apple's AI and machine-learning group told The Information that poor leadership is to blame for its problems with execution, citing an overly relaxed culture, as well as a lack of ambition and appetite for taking risks when designing future versions of Siri. Apple's AI/ML group has been dubbed "AIMLess" internally, while employees are said to refer to Siri as a "hot potato" that is continually passed between different teams with no significant improvements. There were also conflicts about higher pay, faster promotions, longer vacations, and shorter days for colleagues in the AI group. Apple AI chief John Giannandrea was apparently confident he could fix Siri with the right training data and better web-scraping for answers to general knowledge questions. Senior leaders didn't respond with a sense of urgency to the debut of ChatGPT in 2022; Giannandrea told employees that he didn't believe chatbots like ChatGPT added much value for users. In 2023, Apple managers told engineers that they were forbidden from including models from other companies in final Apple products and could only use them to benchmark against their own models, but Apple's own models "didn't perform nearly as well as OpenAI's technology." Meanwhile, Siri leader Robby Walker focused on "small wins" such as reducing wait times for Siri responses. One of Walker's pet projects was removing the "hey" from the "hey Siri" voice command used to invoke the assistant, which took over two years to achieve. He also shot down an effort from a team of engineers to use LLMs to give Siri more emotional sensitivity so it could detect and give appropriate responses to users in distress. Apple started a project codenamed "Link" to develop voice commands to control apps and complete tasks for the Vision Pro, with plans to allow users to navigate the web and resize windows with voice alone, as well as support commands from multiple people in a shared virtual space to collaborate. Most of these features were dropped because of the Siri team's inability to achieve them. The report claims that the demo of Apple Intelligence's most impressive features at WWDC 2024, such as where Siri accesses a user's emails to find real-time flight data and provides a reminder about lunch plans using messages and plots a route in maps, was effectively fictitious. The demo apparently came as a surprise to members of the Siri team, who had never seen working versions of the capabilities. The only feature from the WWDC demonstration that was activated on test devices was Apple Intelligence's pulsing, colorful ribbon around the edge of the display. The decision to showcase an artificial demonstration was a major departure from Apple's past behavior, where it would only show features and products at its events that were already working on test devices and that its marketing team had approved to ensure they could be released on schedule. Some Apple employees are said to be optimistic that Craig Federighi and Mike Crockwell can turn Siri around. Federighi has apparently instructed Siri engineers to do "whatever it takes to build the best AI features," even if that means using open-source models from other companies in its software products as opposed to Apple's own models.

NYT: Apple's AI Struggles Began with 2023 Chip Budget Dispute

Apple's current struggles with Apple Intelligence and Siri began in early 2023 when AI head John Giannandrea sought approval from CEO Tim Cook to purchase more AI chips for development, according to a new report from The New York Times. Cook initially approved doubling the team's chip budget, but CFO Luca Maestri reportedly reduced the increase to less than half that amount, and instead encouraged the team to make existing chips more efficient. The lack of adequate GPU resources meant Apple's AI team had to negotiate for computing power from providers like Google and Amazon. At the time, Apple's data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old -- far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being purchased by competitors like Microsoft, Google, and Meta. The NYT report goes on to cover the leadership conflicts within the company, describing a power struggle between Robby Walker, who oversaw Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive with the software team. The two reportedly battled over who would spearhead Siri's new capabilities, with both ultimately receiving pieces of the project. Apple Intelligence faced significant delays after internal testing revealed Siri was inaccurate on nearly a third of requests. Apple subsequently admitted that it would take longer than expected to roll out the more personalized Siri experience, and that these features will be rolled out "in the coming year." However, according to the report, Apple still plans to release its enhanced Siri experience this fall. The functionality includes personal context, onscreen awareness, and improved app integration. Some Apple executives reportedly aren't concerned about the delay, and believe competitors haven't perfected AI either, giving Apple time to get it right. Following the delay, software chief Craig Federighi reorganized executives, removing responsibility for the new Siri from Giannandrea and reassigning it to Mike Rockwell, who leads the Vision Pro division. The details of Apple's Siri team changes and the delayed Siri revamp were previously reported by Bloomberg and The Information. For more details on Apple's internal issues, including political infighting, budget constraints, and talent drain, see The New York Times' full report.

Apple's uncharacteristic Siri stumble is bad news for you, and now we may know how it happened and why there's reason for hope

As someone who's covered Apple for almost a quarter of a century, this Apple Intelligence Siri chapter is by far its most confounding one. We're now just two months away from the next Apple developer's conference, and it will likely mark an ignominious anniversary for Apple's artificial intelligence efforts. Apple's uncharacteristic failure to deliver on a product promise has shocked many fans. Ever since the company announced it would not deliver some of the promised Siri enhancements this year, I, for one, have been wondering how we got here. Now, a new report paints a surprising picture of rival AI factions or rather two teams with divergent strategies that somehow led to flashy demos and some unfulfilled promises. Not everything in The Information's report on the Apple Siri debacle is surprising. I've been writing for some time about how Apple's usually laudable adherence to privacy principles hamstrung its Siri efforts. However, The Information's claim that Apple's AI lead John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi (Apple's software engineering head) were in some fashion acting at cross purposes is unexpected. Giannandrea's slow and steady approach and Apple's insistence on using its own models as opposed to, say, OpenAI's GPT LLMs was in stark contrast to the obvious excitement Federighi's Intelligent Systems team had for experimenting with and possibly using third-party models. Internal battles are not unheard of in companies of all sizes, but they usually don't play out on a public stage at Apple. As The Information tells it, the Apple Intelligence demos I saw last June at WWDC may have broken what I thought was a cardinal rule for Apple: never announce technology that you can't demo live, at least in some fashion. When Apple stunned WWDC 2023 with the new Apple Vision Pro, it followed later that afternoon by inviting a handful of journalists (including me) for hands-on demos. The pricey mixed reality headset wasn't done, but it was still functional enough to blow our collective minds. In the case of Apple's Intelligence, though, our post-event demos were limited (Siri was no smarter). It seems that not only were many of the best bits not finished, but Apple may have shown them off in the pre-tapped keynote without giving the main Apple AI team in charge of Siri a full heads-up. Doing so obviously put Apple in a tough spot. The pre-tapped WWDC video showed us a responsive and aware Siri capable of looking into your iPhone, its apps, and your information to take action on your behalf. Apple then promised we'd see it sometime that year. Even after Apple delivered the iPhone 16 with iOS 18 and the first blush of Apple Intelligence (a new look, writing tools, Image Playground, Genmojis), most assumed it was just a matter of time before Siri got its major intelligence glow-up. By possibly demonstrating technology that was not ready or even fully programmed to run on any Apple Intelligence-ready iPhone, Apple may have set itself or, at least the Siri team, up for failure. Apple hasn't spoken on the record about this beyond the initial announcement of the delay. News that Apple Intelligence is now reportedly under Craig Federighi's leadership is further proof that perhaps Apple realizes it chose the wrong path. Federighi's team, according to The Information, is much more open to integrating third-party LLMs. It's a good strategy not only because it will help Apple's AI efforts get back on track but also because it's the same strategy employed by most of its AI competitors, at least those who are not at heart AI companies. Late in the game, Amazon relied on Perplexity's Claude AI models to build its own Nova system. Samsung has leaned heavily on Google Gemini to develop its own models. As we well know, Microsoft made a big bet on OpenAI's GPT models to power Bing AI and then Copilot to build its own Microsoft AI models. This, folks, is the way in. Sure, it's maybe less predictable and, possibly, rock-solid secure than Apple's initial strategy, but most of these companies are racing ahead while iPhone fans wait for Apple to get its act together. Federighi (and Vision Pro lead Mike Walker) taking over is good news, but much of Apple's future success in the AI space will depend on Apple CEO Tim Cook's leadership. This failure happened under his watch, possibly because he trusted the team to get the job done and has been adamant about sticking to Apple's secure and private approach. Now Cook has to find a new plan and, with Federighi, identify a clear path that gets you the smarter Siri you want in 2026, if not sooner. I've seen Apple do amazing things in the past, and honestly, I'm confident it'll do it again here.

Apple's AI-Powered Siri Is Such a Disaster That Employees Have Given the Team Developing It a Rude Nickname

Apple has floundered in its efforts to bring a convincing AI product to the table -- so much so that it's become the subject of derision even among its own employees, The Information reports. More specifically, it's the AI and machine-learning group that's getting the lion's share of mockery. Known as AI/ML for short, its woes only deepened after Apple announced that it had to delay its much-hyped next iteration of AI enhancements for Siri until 2026. With its leadership being increasingly called into question and with seemingly more embarrassments than victories to its name, Apple engineers outside the group bestowed it a cruel nickname: "AIMLess," according to the Information. The moniker is also a jab at AI/ML's ousted leaders. Coinciding with the delay, Apple told staff it was taking its AI chief John Giannandrea off leading the Siri AI project. Giannandrea had a reputation for being relaxed, quiet, and non-confrontational, while his lieutenant Robby Walker was criticized for lacking ambition and being too risk-averse. More than half a dozen former employees who worked in Giannandrea and Walker's group, per the report, blamed poor leadership for the project's struggles. Giannandrea is being replaced by head of software engineering Craig Federighi, with executive Mike Rockwell, who worked on Apple's mixed reality Vision Pro headset, assuming Walker's duties. Federighi has led Apple's engineering team since 2012, earning a reputation for efficiency and execution. His leadership style is the opposite of Giannandrea's: tough and demanding, according to the Information. The two bigwigs often butted heads, with resentment building between the Siri group and the software group, which had its own crew of AI engineers. The release of OpenAI's ChatGPT deepened the fissure: Gianandrea's team didn't respond with a sense of urgency, according to former engineers, while Federighi's outfit immediately started exploring the use of large language models to improve the iPhone. At a critical moment in the AI race that called for decisiveness, the Siri team wavered. After teasing major upgrades to Siri at Apple's annual developers conference, Giannandrea and company couldn't decide whether to build an LLM that would run locally on a user's iPhone or build a bigger one that would run on the cloud to handle more complex tasks. In the end, they went with Plan C: build one huge model to handle everything, according to the Information, undoing the company's commitment to keeping Siri's software on-device, and putting it on the path to a delayed rollout. Since then, the straits haven't looked any less dire. After all the hype, many users felt that Apple Intelligence was lackluster at best. Apple also faced significant backlash after one of its features for summarizing news headlines constantly misreported them, forcing Apple to pull the plug. While many in the company are hopeful that the injection of new leadership can salvage Siri's botched AI facelift, getting itself on even footing in the AI race is going to be an uphill battle, even for Apple.

Behind the scenes, Siri's failed iOS 18 upgrade was a decade-long managerial car crash

An example of a contextual query Siri will be able to answer, eventually. - Image Credit: Apple The long-delayed overhaul of Siri was hit by repeated failures to progress, with leadership problems making it harder to execute than it should've been. In March, Apple admitted that its attempt to make Siri more personalized and up to date was far behind schedule. It confirmed that there were delays in getting Siri to the state where the company wanted it to be, and that it would be sorted out in the coming year. Since that rare admittance from Apple, the company has done what it can to fix the situation. This included a managerial reshuffle, pushing John Giannandrea out of the top Siri role in favor of Mike Rockwell. It was a major event in a situation that was extremely embarrassing to Apple. However, the entire affair is something that could have been avoided, reports The Information, had Siri not fallen victim to poor leadership choices. Multiple people who worked in the AI and software engineering groups within Apple told the report that conflicting personalities were a problem. Some, who worked under the AI and machine learning group under Giannandrea said that poor leadership was at play. The sources also identified Robby Walker, who worked under Giannandrea, as being one of the reasons for the issues, due to an apparent lack of ambition and willingness to take risks on future Siri designs. The employees also referred to Siri as a "hot potato" within Apple, due to it being passed between the different teams over the years. With the latest reshuffle putting Siri under the oversight of software boss Craig Federighi, they have some hope that favorable changes will be made. The problems getting Siri modernized started years ago, in 2018, when Giannandrea moved from Google to work on Apple's new AI group. At a time when Siri was beginning to stagnate, Giannandrea took an interest in managing the digital assistant. Before then, engineers working on Siri felt as if they were second-class citizens with Apple, with frustrations that the software engineering team's control over iOS updates failing to prioritize Siri fixes. Those software engineers also felt the Siri team weren't able to keep up with new features being developed in the group. Giannandrea's plan was to make Apple's own AI-based voice assistant, using a playbook he gleaned from Google. He believed Apple had to get better training data, and to do better at web-scraping for answers. However, when urged to shake up Siri's leadership, he declined to do so. The lack of risk-taking by Walker was a problem, the group of sources added. It was believed that Walker downplayed efforts to swing for the fences, and instead worked on other less meaningful metrics. This apparently included celebrations of small wins, like reducing the response time for user queries. His work to remove "Hey" from "Hey Siri" also took more than two years to pull off, with little actual real benefit in the end. Walker also dismissed one attempt in 2023 for one team to use LLMs for Siri to gain emotional sensitivity, such as to detect if a user is in distress. He said he would rather focus on the next Siri release instead of committing resources to the effort. That team still went away to work on the project via the software engineering group's safety and location team, without his knowledge. The software engineering group and the AI team had a dysfunctional relationship, with respective leaders Federighi and Giannandrea having dramatically different managing styles. Resentments also built up over difference in pay, the speed of promotions in the AI group, and vacation periods. Eventually, Federighi's groups started to mass together hundreds of machine learning engineers to work on its own models, separate from the main AI team. This included building demos to voice-control apps without Siri, which the Siri team didn't appreciate. An attempt to introduce voice control systems for apps on a headset that would become the Apple Vision Pro was also problem-filled. Hostility between Walker and others in the group, as well as the slowness of the Siri group in general, became a big point of friction once again. When ChatGPT was released in 2022, the AI group didn't respond with any real urgency, the engineers claim. By contrast the software engineering group were far more interested, with demos presented to Federighi of what could be accomplished. Eventually, Apple's managers said in 2023 that engineers couldn't include external models in Apple products. But, the responsibility to build the models was the responsibility of the AI group. They also apparently didn't perform as well as OpenAI's offerings, employees explained. Despite years of issues, the current situation where the Federighi-controlled software engineering groups would oversee the AI work led by Rockwell should be a fruitful one for Siri's progress. Federighi is viewed as having more knowledge of technical details than many under his control. He has also told Siri's machine learning engineers to do whatever they need to make the best AI features, even if it's using open-source models from other companies. Meanwhile Rockwell, who has a good track record in the company, is viewed as someone with vision, which Walker certainly lacked.

Apple hampered its Siri ambitions by penny-pinching

Apple Intelligence delays are all ex-CFO Luca Maestri's fault, apparently If Apple isn't able to get its Siri improvements out with iOS 19 in the fall, a new report tries to put the blame on early cost-cutting decisions by CFO Luca Maestri. First it was that Apple is years behind the rest of the industry in AI, then it was that Apple management can't cope. Now according to the New York Times, the reason Apple Intelligence is failing is because Apple was too miserly to spend some cash years ago. Specifically, the claim is that in 2023, the then-chief financial officer Luca Maestri halved a budget that engineers had wanted for buying GPU processors for AI development work. It doesn't matter that Apple is often the most highly valued firm in the world, you don't get to be CFO of it if you're not in absolute control of spending. Only, the story is that the engineers first went to Tim Cook with their pitch -- and Cook said yes. Maestri then wasn't just rejecting Apple's engineers, he was saying no to the CEO. It's not impossible. And in 2023, there wasn't the same mad scramble for AI that there is now, so it's understandably unlucky timing. Or it's that the engineers didn't make a good enough case. Their case would have seen the team's processor budget double. Maestri did increase the budget, but reportedly less than half of what was originally approved. He's said to have told the team to be more efficient with the processors they already had. The AI team therefore reportedly had to negotiate with Google and Amazon to use their data centers instead of, presumably, Apple's own. They were also only able to do some unspecified proportion of their AI development on Nvidia processors, because of availability. This report does also say that Tim Cook is said to be reluctant to give clear direction to product teams. That might speak to how Steve Jobs said Cook was not a "product person". Or it could be that communication within Apple management is failing. Whichever it is, Cook seemingly did not tell Maestri no, the team needs that budget. So the team didn't get it, the team has poor management, and consequently Apple is now embarrassed by the slow rollout of an improved Siri. Just as with all recent reports about the internal disagreements over AI at Apple, this new account mostly sees it as good news that the company has changed managers. It warns of a shifting deck chairs kind of mentality, and the report warns of how Apple is losing experienced staff to retirement and to being poached. If Apple is able to turn around its Apple Intelligence fortunes, then in years to come the credit will be given to Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell. The former is the high-profile and charismatic software chief, while the latter headed up the Apple Vision Pro. Rockwell has replaced Apple AI head John Giannandrea, and will be reporting to Federighi. But then there is Kim Vorrath. Despite being a very long-time Apple employee, she's not had the kind of profile some other key staff have. Yet reportedly, she is known within Apple for being a fixer who gets projects back on track. In January 2025, she was moved to the Apple Intelligence team -- and now we're seeing that team shaken up.

Inside Apple's AI struggles: Budget cuts, delays, and a stalled Siri upgrade

This year has been a tough one for Apple. The company continues to have setbacks from the abysmal sales of the Apple Vision Pro to the numerous challenges it's had with AI. April has been arguably the most challenging month for the iPhone maker after President Donald Trump revealed a list of countries that were going to be hit with tariffs. This caused Apple's stock to take an immediate hit, leading to a loss of more than $700 million in market value, according to Investopedia. There appears to be a bit of reprieve for Apple as smartphones, laptops, and computers have been excluded from Trump's tariffs as of Friday. A new report from the New York Times published on Friday detailed even more of the drama happening behind the doors at Apple. The report details Apple's initial problems with AI that started in 2023. John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI, attempted to get more GPUs to begin this move into AI. Apple reportedly had 50,000 GPUs at its data centers, and most were more than five years old. To move into developing AI, the company would need more GPUs and the newest versions. Apple CEO Tim Cook approved the doubling of the chip budget for AI, however, Apple's finance chief, Luca Maestri, slashed that budget to less than half, according to the report. This caused issues for the team working on AI, as it had limited access to computing power. The chips reportedly purchased were not from Nvidia, the leader in AI chips, but instead were made by Google. A spokeswoman from Apple did tell the New York Times that the budget request for GPUs by Giannandrea was fulfilled over time. Apple's AI efforts were shown last year when the company revealed Apple Intelligence along with the iPhone 16. The new tech was to add AI features to the iPhone, but the rollout for those features has been a bit on the slow side. What appeared to be the ultimate conclusion of these efforts was an overhauled Siri that could act as a true AI assistant. Apple initially planned to release this smarter Siri sometime in the spring, however, that plan was scrapped completely last month. This led to a change in leadership within Apple. Mike Rockwell, the creator of the Vision Pro for the company, ended up replacing Giannandrea, who was in charge of the team handling the Siri upgrade. According to the report, the new Siri will make its debut later this year in the fall. This will likely be when the company reveals the iPhone 17 and its other new products. Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9. This is the event where the company will reveal the next MacOS, WatchOS, and iOS 19. This will also be the event where it will show off more of the capabilities of its Apple Intelligence.

What's wrong with Apple?

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even before President Donald Trump's tariffs threatened to upend Apple's manufacturing business in China, the company's struggle to make new products was leading some people inside its lavish Silicon Valley headquarters to wonder whether the company had somehow lost its magic. The tariffs, which were introduced April 2, caused Apple to lose $773 billion in market capitalization in four days and briefly lose its standing as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. But investors had already started to sour on the company, sending its share price down 8% in the first four months of the year, double the S&P 500's decline. Apple had hoped to revive its fortunes over the past year with a virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro, and an artificial intelligence system called Apple Intelligence. Sales of the headset have been a disappointment, however, and the signature features of the AI system have been postponed because it didn't work as well as the company expected. The company's issues underscored how its reputation for innovation, once considered a fundamental element of its brand, has become an albatross, fueling angst among employees and frustration among customers. And company insiders worry that Apple, despite its years of gravity-defying profits, is hamstrung by the political infighting, penny pinching and talent drain that often bedevil large companies, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and advisers. Apple declined to comment. It has been a decade since the releases of Apple's most recent commercial successes: the Apple Watch and AirPods. Its services like Apple TV+ and Fitness+, which it introduced in 2019, lag behind rivals in subscriptions. Half of its sales still come from the iPhone, an 18-year-old product that is incrementally improved nearly every year. While Vision Pro sales have been disappointing, Apple's issues with Apple Intelligence exposed dysfunction inside the organization. In a nearly two-hour video presentation last summer, Apple demonstrated how the AI product would summarize notifications and offer writing tools to improve emails and messages. It also revealed an improved Siri virtual assistant that could combine information on a phone, like a message about someone's travel itinerary, with information on the web, like a flight arrival time. The AI features were unavailable when new iPhones shipped. They arrived in October, about a month late, and quickly ran into trouble. Notification summaries misrepresented news reports, leading Apple to disable that feature. Then, last month, the company postponed the spring release of an improved Siri because internal testing found that it was inaccurate on nearly a third of requests, said three people familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After the delay, Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, told employees that the company would reshuffle its executives, removing responsibility for developing the new Siri from John Giannandrea, the company's head of AI, and giving it to Mike Rockwell, the head of its Vision Pro headset. "Apple needs to understand what happened because this is bigger than just rearranging the deck chairs," said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst who previously worked as a product marketer at Apple. "If ever there's been an example of overpromising and underdelivering, it's Apple Intelligence." It was the first time in years that Apple hadn't shipped a product it had unveiled. Some details of Apple's changes to its Siri team and challenges were previously reported by Bloomberg and The Information. The AI stumble was set in motion in early 2023. Giannandrea, who was overseeing the effort, sought approval from the company's CEO, Tim Cook, to buy more AI chips, known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, five people with knowledge of the request said. The chips, which can perform hundreds of computations simultaneously, are critical to building the neural networks of AI systems, like chatbots, that can answer questions or write software code. At the time, Apple's data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old -- far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by AI leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, these people said. Cook approved a plan to double the team's chip budget, but Apple's finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient. The lack of GPUs meant the team developing AI systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said. The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its AI development. At the same time, leaders at two of Apple's software teams were battling over who would spearhead the rollout of Siri's new abilities, three people who worked on the effort said. Robby Walker, who oversaw Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive with the software team, struggled over who would have responsibility for some aspects of the project. Both ended up with pieces of the project. The infighting followed a broader exodus of talent from Apple. In 2019, Jony Ive, the company's chief designer, left to start his own design firm and poached more than a dozen integral Apple designers and engineers. And Dan Riccio, the company's longtime head of product design who worked on the Apple Watch, retired last year. In their place, Apple has been left with old and new leaders with less product development experience. Giannandrea, who joined the company in 2019 from Google, had never led the launch of a high-profile product like the improved Siri. And Federighi, his counterpart overseeing software, had never led the creation of a new operating system like some of his predecessors in that role. Cook, 64, who has a background in operations, has been hesitant over the years to provide clear and direct guidance on product development, said three people familiar with the way the company operates. "It's clearly a breakdown of leadership and communication and internal processes," said Benedict Evans, an independent analyst who previously worked as a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz. As the clock ticks on fixing Siri, Apple will be defending the assistant's current shortcomings. Last month, customers filed a federal lawsuit accusing Apple of false advertising. Since then, its commercials about Siri have gone dark.

Apple faked the upgraded Siri demo and advertised non-existent products

TL;DR: Apple's Siri upgrade, marketed as "Apple Intelligence," has been delayed, impacting the iPhone 16 launch. Internal conflicts between John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi's teams hindered progress. Siri engineers felt marginalized, and the promised features were not functional at WWDC 2024. The release is now postponed to 2026. One of Apple's biggest blunders in years is the advertisement of an advanced Siri upgrade under the guise of "Apple Intelligence," which has now been officially delayed by the company. But, Apple used this feature to sell the iPhone 16 generation, and still to this day, the biggest and most sought-after feature within Apple's umbrella of Apple Intelligence features is yet to be released. Craig Federighi We are now getting some behind-the-scenes details about why a fully integrated and upgraded Siri hasn't come to fruition and the position Apple was in with the technology before an announcement was made at WWDC 2024. According to a report from The Information, former Apple employees speaking to Wayne Ma, the journalist behind the recent piece, high-profile Apple leadership styles are partly to blame. John Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018 and began overseeing the development of Siri, with his official title being the Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy. According to the report, Siri engineers already felt like "second-class citizens" at Apple, and this problem was exacerbated by struggling to keep up with constant iOS updates and features being released by the iOS software team led by Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. John Giannandrea The problems began when John and Craig's managerial styles began to clash, with reports indicating that John is more a slow mover, listening to concerns and letting those underneath his position take charge of the project, while Craig is the opposite, being described as brash and quick, but also very efficient and knowledgable. The Information reports that much of what the public knows about Apple Intelligence is because of Federighi, who eventually gained his own AI team separate from Giannandrea's. The AI team on the iOS side began absorbing more responsibilities, and this wasn't appreciated by Giannandrea's Siri team, who were reportedly very slow to make any progress. Deleted Apple TV ad for non-existent Apple Intelligence + Siri feature A damming piece of information that indicates a divide between the two software teams comes from members of the Siri team, which, The Information reports, had never seen a working version of the Siri 2.0 upgrade. For those who don't know, Apple showcased demos of Siri pulling data from across various apps and answering questions such as "When is my mom's flight going to land?" or the voice assistant accessing a user's email, messages, and calendar. This was the Siri Apple ran multiple advertisements for to sell its latest generation of iPhone, with some of those ads now even being removed. According to The Information, citing former Apple employees, the only working piece of what was demonstrated to the public, and at the time was on Apple's test devices, was a pulsing, colorful ribbon that appeared on the edges of the iPhone screen when a user prompted Siri. Moreover, another source said Apple didn't have any of the revamped Siri products in a functional state when it unveiled them at WWDC 2024 -- they were non-existent. Apple has now delayed the revamped Siri, or Siri with integrated Apple Intelligence features, until sometime in 2026.

'Hey Siri: Explain How Internal Feuding at Apple Left the Company Losing the AI Race'

But a damning new leak from industry news site The Information suggests that it was more than tech issues that left Apple far behind peers like OpenAI or Google. Mismanagement allowed a strange form of infighting to flourish among the tech giant's research teams, and the effects of this internal strife offer a great lesson for any company trying to develop a new product or complete a large project. Over half a dozen former workers in Apple's AI and machine learning section spoke to The Information about the problems in making a smarter Siri, and laid the blame squarely on poor leadership. They cited a lack of vision about grasping how peer companies were innovating, a damaging emphasis on improving small features rather than pushing for radical design overhauls, and inter-team rivalries between within the company. The news outlet says that former AI leader John Giannandrea apparently didn't believe chatbots, exemplified by ChatGPT, were useful. He told his staff this in 2022.

What's wrong with Apple?

Apple had hoped to revive its fortunes over the past year with a virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro, and an artificial intelligence system called Apple Intelligence. Sales of the headset have been a disappointment, however, and the signature features of the AI system have been postponed because it didn't work as well as the company had expected.Even before President Donald Trump's tariffs threatened to upend Apple's manufacturing business in China, the company's struggle to make new products was leading some people inside its lavish Silicon Valley headquarters to wonder whether the company had somehow lost its magic. The tariffs, which were introduced April 2, caused Apple to lose $773 billion in market capitalization in four days and briefly lose its standing as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. But investors had already started to sour on the company, sending its share price down 8% in the first four months of the year, double the S&P 500's decline. Apple had hoped to revive its fortunes over the past year with a virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro, and an artificial intelligence system called Apple Intelligence. Sales of the headset have been a disappointment, however, and the signature features of the AI system have been postponed because it didn't work as well as the company had expected. The company's issues underscored how its reputation for innovation, once considered a fundamental element of its brand, has become an albatross, fueling angst among employees and frustration among customers. And company insiders worry that Apple, despite its years of gravity-defying profits, is hamstrung by the political infighting, penny pinching and talent drain that often bedevil large companies, according to more than a dozen former and current employees and advisers. Apple declined to comment. It has been a decade since the releases of Apple's most recent commercial successes: the Apple Watch and AirPods. Its services like Apple TV+ and Fitness+, which it introduced in 2019, lag behind rivals in subscriptions. Half of its sales still come from the iPhone, an 18-year-old product that is incrementally improved nearly every year. While Vision Pro sales have been disappointing, Apple's issues with Apple Intelligence exposed dysfunction inside the organization. In a nearly two-hour video presentation last summer, Apple demonstrated how the AI product would summarize notifications and offer writing tools to improve emails and messages. It also revealed an improved Siri virtual assistant that could combine information on a phone, like a message about someone's travel itinerary, with information on the web, like a flight arrival time. The AI features were unavailable when new iPhones shipped. They arrived in October, about a month late, and quickly ran into trouble. Notification summaries misrepresented news reports, leading Apple to disable that feature. Then, last month, the company postponed the spring release of an improved Siri because internal testing found that it was inaccurate on nearly a third of requests, said three people familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After the delay, Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, told employees that the company would reshuffle its executives, removing responsibility for developing the new Siri from John Giannandrea, the company's head of AI, and giving it to Mike Rockwell, the head of its Vision Pro headset. "Apple needs to understand what happened because this is bigger than just rearranging the deck chairs," said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst who previously worked as a product marketer at Apple. "If ever there's been an example of overpromising and underdelivering, it's Apple Intelligence." It was the first time in years that Apple hadn't shipped a product it had unveiled. Some details of Apple's changes to its Siri team and challenges were previously reported by Bloomberg and The Information. The AI stumble was set in motion in early 2023. Giannandrea, who was overseeing the effort, sought approval from the company's CEO, Tim Cook, to buy more AI chips, known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, five people with knowledge of the request said. The chips, which can perform hundreds of computations at the same time, are critical to building the neural networks of AI systems, like chatbots, that can answer questions or write software code. At the time, Apple's data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old -- far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by AI leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, these people said. Cook approved a plan to double the team's chip budget, but Apple's finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient. The lack of GPUs meant the team developing AI systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said. The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its AI development. At the same time, leaders at two of Apple's software teams were battling over who would spearhead the rollout of Siri's new abilities, three people who worked on the effort said. Robby Walker, who oversaw Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive with the software team, struggled over who would have responsibility for some aspects of the project. Both ended up with pieces of the project. The infighting followed a broader exodus of talent from Apple. In 2019, Jony Ive, the company's chief designer, left to start his own design firm and poached more than a dozen integral Apple designers and engineers. And Dan Riccio, the company's longtime head of product design who worked on the Apple Watch, retired last year. In their place, Apple has been left with old and new leaders with less product development experience. Giannandrea, who joined the company in 2019 from Google, had never led the launch of a high-profile product like the improved Siri. And Federighi, his counterpart overseeing software, had never led the creation of a new operating system like some of his predecessors in that role. Cook, 64, who has a background in operations, has been hesitant over the years to provide clear and direct guidance on product development, said three people familiar with the way the company operates. "It's clearly a breakdown of leadership and communication and internal processes," said Benedict Evans, an independent analyst who previously worked as a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz. Apple hasn't canceled its revamped Siri. The company plans to release a virtual assistant in the fall capable of doing things like editing and sending a photo to a friend on request, three people with knowledge of its plans said. Some of Apple's leaders don't think the delay is a problem because none of Apple's rivals, like Google and Meta, have figured out AI yet, these people said. They believe there's time to get it right. As the clock ticks on fixing Siri, Apple will be defending the assistant's current shortcomings. Last month, customers filed a federal lawsuit accusing Apple of false advertising. Since then, its commercials about Siri have gone dark.