In a Siri team meeting, Apple senior director Robby Walker acknowledged that employees might be feeling “angry, disappointed, burned out and embarrassed” following the bad press about delays in Apple Intelligence and “more personalized” Siri features, reports Bloomberg (a subscription is required to read the entire article).
However, he praised the hard work of employees and the “incredibly impressive” features they developed, saying that Apple would continue to work to “ship the world’s greatest virtual assistant” to Apple users. “
Apparently, Apple doesn’t have a concrete time frame for when the enhanced Siri will finally launch. The company may be aiming for iOS 19, but Walker has his doubts.
“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker reportedly said. “We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred.”
When it comes to assigning blame, Bloomber says Walker told staffers that there is “intense personal accountability” shared by John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering.
Bloomberg reports that Apple “doesn’t plan to immediately fire any top executives over the AI crisis.” It is, however, planning “management adjustments” in response to the problems, including “moving more senior executives under Giannandrea to assist with a turnaround effort.”
Walker also called out Apple’s marketing department’s decision to promote these features even though they weren’t ready. This decision “[made] matters worse,” he said.
