Siri team member reveals "hundreds of bugs" behind revamped Apple Intelligence delay

Apple’s highly anticipated Siri upgrade has been postponed indefinitely as engineers battle an overwhelming number of technical issues. “There are hundreds of bugs right now,” a member of the Siri team told Bloomberg. “It’s whack-a-mole. You fix one issue, and three more crop up.” This revelation comes after Apple pulled advertisements featuring ‘The Last of Us’ star Bella Ramsey showcasing Siri’s promised new capabilities — features that were nowhere near ready for public release despite being heavily promoted since the iPhone 16 launch last fall.

In March, Siri team director Robby Walker met with his demoralized staff, comparing their efforts to an impossible swimming feat. “We swam hundreds of miles—we set a Guinness Book of World Records for swimming distance—but we still didn’t swim to Hawaii,” Walker told the team, according to Bloomberg’s report. The upgraded assistant reportedly fails to work properly about a third of the time.

The main technical hurdle stems from Apple essentially splitting Siri’s infrastructure in two — with legacy code handling basic functions like setting alarms, while new code powers requests drawing on personal data. This compromise was intended to speed up development but instead created integration problems, with features working individually but failing when merged together.

Apple’s AI struggles extend beyond Siri. The company’s broader Apple Intelligence initiative has faced numerous delays and setbacks since being announced last June. Features like custom “Genmojis” arrived months behind schedule, often overheating devices and draining batteries. The news summary feature was shut down entirely after generating false headlines.

The crisis has led to a significant leadership shakeup, with AI chief John Giannandrea losing control over product development, including Siri. Mike Rockwell, who previously led the Vision Pro headset team, now oversees Siri under software chief Craig Federighi’s growing AI portfolio.

The report, highlighted by The Verge too, also mentions Apple’s AI team in Zurich is now creating an entirely new architecture dubbed “LLM Siri,” which is a “monolithic model” built completely on a large language model engine, abandoning the problematic hybrid approach.

Apple services chief Eddy Cue has reportedly warned colleagues that the company’s position atop the tech world is at risk, comparing their situation to Nokia before the iPhone. In court testimony this month, Cue said the iPhone might be irrelevant within a decade “as crazy as that sounds.”

With WWDC 2025 approaching next month, Apple plans to focus on upgrading existing Intelligence capabilities while adding new features like AI-optimized battery management. However, the promised Siri overhaul — including features demonstrated nearly a year ago — remains months away from shipping.

Industry analyst Dag Kittlaus, who co-created the original Siri app later acquired by Apple, remains optimistic. “All of the foundational model companies have no idea what an assistant is, while Apple has been working on the concept since 2010,” he told Bloomberg. “They still have the button, the brand and, if they do a brain transplant for Siri, they have every opportunity to take over as the assistant of choice.”