By Joanna Stern

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- For years, Apple events felt haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs. This week, a different ghost hovered: Siri.

A year ago, on this same sunny and pristine Apple Park campus at the Worldwide Developers Conference, the company unveiled its grand vision for artificial intelligence.

"Apple Intelligence" was a suite of generative-AI tools with an exciting centerpiece: a Siri that was finally smart. Some Siri features arrived, but the coolest -- where Siri can respond to things you're doing on your phone, as if it were your sidekick -- never did. Apple quietly pulled plans, even stifling an ad it had run to hype the feature.

After announcing new operating systems this week, Apple executives are defending the company's AI strategy. Big time. In fact, they are now saying the company is rebuilding Siri from the ground up.

"This stuff takes hard work, but we do see AI as a long-term transformational wave as one that's going to affect our industry and of course our society for decades to come," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, told me in an interview at the company's headquarters. "There's no need to rush out with the wrong features and the wrong product just to be first."

Only Apple wasn't first, not even close. Its Silicon Valley competitors are running laps around it in terms of AI smarts. The promised Apple intelligence features that did arrive? I don't use them. I bet you don't either.

So when Apple offered me the chance to sit down with Federighi and marketing head Greg Joswiak, I had a lot of questions about the future of AI at the world's richest consumer-tech company. Watch the video above to see some of the conversation. Here's what I found out.

What happened to smarter Siri?

At Apple's conference last June, the company showed off how Siri could search through your apps to tell you when to pick up your mom from the airport. The ad, featuring "Last of Us" actress Bella Ramsey, demoed another trick, asking Siri to remind you of the name of someone you met a few weeks ago.

I had assumed Apple never actually had working versions of those features -- that they were just demoware. But the execs say that isn't the case.

"We had some real software," Federighi said. "We were able to demonstrate there and show what was coming, but it didn't converge in the way quality-wise that we needed it to."

Now, the executives say they are working on a new underlying architecture for Siri, one that will include these features and more. Details, please!

"Look, on the one hand, I would love to dish about my enthusiasm for our future plans, but that's exactly what we don't want to do right now to miss set expectations," Federighi said.

OK, so at least Apple has learned something from the Siri marketing faux pas.

What does Apple want to do in AI?

Why can't Apple deliver these things? They are Apple. They have boatloads of engineers and cash. Federighi's answer is that this is new technology, especially the on-device AI processing that combines AI models with a user's personal information. (Another giant, Amazon, is struggling too.)

In iOS 26, announced yesterday and coming this fall, Apple incorporated more of OpenAI's technology: You can use the camera and screenshots in discussions with ChatGPT or generate images using OpenAI's image generator. You could argue that the company should be using its own AI in core features.

Federighi defended the company's current models and said it would "keep building up the capability of our own models." However, he added, "We see lots of people doing other exciting things with theirs and we want to make sure our customers can access the best of everything."

Plus, both executives made it clear they don't want to roll out just another chatbot. They want its AI to be integrated deep into the operating systems -- so deep you don't always know it's AI.

What is the real future here?

That's admirable but right now Apple Intelligence tools aren't very good. When I asked why that is and why I find myself using competitor AI products all the time, Federighi had the most honest answer I've heard from the company.

He said when the internet came along, no one was asking Apple why it didn't have a search engine or an e-commerce site like Amazon.

"The internet was vast," he said. "It was an opportunity for many, many companies and for users to do a wide diversity of things. It was also a huge enabler for Apple. Apple made the internet accessible in a lot of ways -- more than anyone. That didn't mean every experience that you take on was going to happen inside of Apple."

The trouble is, being the vessel for other companies' wares can make you popular, but it doesn't always make business sense. If we become too dependent on certain AI platforms, we might not care what devices we use to get them.

When I asked about future AI devices, including glasses, Federighi said Apple's current devices, especially the wearables, are "pretty hard to beat."

Some people have Samsung TVs, some people have Sony TVs, but many people watch Netflix -- which is worth more than the other two companies combined.

Finally, I asked the two, who have combined been at Apple for over 60 years, if this was one of the hardest patches the company has gone through.

Joswiak invoked Jobs. "I remember Steve had come back and he told us, look, what we have to do is create the right products and tell people about them. And if we do that, everything else will work out."

Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 10, 2025 18:28 ET (22:28 GMT)

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