Apple reportedly held an all-hands meeting with its Siri team to discuss the “embarrassing” and “ugly” delay of AI-enhanced functionality. Details from the meeting show that this AI voice assistant functionality, which has been heavily advertised through the iPhone 16 marketing campaign, may arrive even later than expected.

Anonymous sources within Apple described the meeting toBloomberg’sMark Gurman, an Apple analyst and fairly reliable leaker.

According to Gurman, Apple senior director Robby Walker used the meeting to lay out the realities of the AI Siri delay and provide some reassurance for the Siri team. Walker acknowledged that unfinished Siri AI capabilities “were included in a series of marketing campaigns and TV commercials starting last year,” an unusual move that made Apple’s delay particularly “ugly.”

Additionally, Walker told employees that AI Siri enhancements may not be finalized in time for an iOS 19.X release. The company hopes to nail a rollout before the fall of 2026, but “the company has several more priorities in development, and trade-offs will need to be made.” If Siri enhancements are pushed to iOS 20, then they won’t arrive until September 2026 at the earliest.

“To make matters worse, Apple’s marketing communications department wanted to promote the enhancements. Despite not being ready, the capabilities were included in a series of marketing campaigns and TV commercials starting last year … This was not one of these situations where we get to show people our plan after it’s done. We showed people before.”

As forwhythe Apple Intelligence upgrade was delayed—well, take a guess. Walker reportedly told employees that AI Siri is unfinished and only works properly 80% of the time (which, to be fair, is adecent batting averagefor an AI product).

There also appears to besome panicamong Apple’s senior leadership because existing AI features don’t work as advertised—this panic was not discussed during the all-hands Siri meeting, though it likely influenced the content of the discussion. Robby Walker purportedly said that “these [AI features] are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse.”

Suffice to say, Apple has failed to establish itself as a leader in AI. The company is slow to introduce new features and is overly-reliant on third parties, specifically OpenAI. Its implementation of AI functionality is generally quite poor, too. Generative text and other popular featuresare tucked in odd places, while highly-visible features likeNotification Summariesare often hilariously unreliable (or, in some cases,horrifyingly misinformative).

Still, Robby Walker sees value in AI functionality and appears to be proud of the Siri team’s progress. He reportedly told employees that they should be proud of their “incredible progress” He showed demos of AI Siri controlling apps, adding attachments to an email, and hunting down a driver’s license number from an old photo. He also acknowledged that the Siri team may feel “angry, disappointed, burned out, and embarrassed” because of the pressures created by misguided marketing.

Apple share prices declined by 10% in the week following the AI Siri delay. That said, we’re in the middle of a broad stock market downturn due to tariffs and political unpredictability,

so the true impact of the Siri delay on Apple’s market value is unclear. Rumors of an upcomingiOS and macOS redesign, which were relayed to Apple analysts by internal sources just a few days after the AI Siri delay, may have also provided some harm reduction for Apple (though I doubt that Apple intentionally leaked this info, it seems that the company’s employees are just in a leaky mood).

To reiterate, Apple says that its AI-enhanced Siri voice assistant will arrive sometime in 2026. Reports indicate that Apple does not have an internal deadline for this release. If the company fails to roll out the upgraded Siri in an iOS 19.X update, then a September 2026 release alongside iOS 20 is likely.