Apple says it’s still on track to launch a new Siri this year as promised – 9to5Mac

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported yesterday that Apple’s new Siri initiative is facing internal delays as it was originally planned to start with iOS 26.4. Gurman’s suggested features may begin appearing in iOS 26.5 or later later this year.

The news seemingly shook investor confidence and Apple shares fell sharply today. Seemingly in response, CNBC’s Steve Kovach says Apple has confirmed to him that it’s still on track to launch a new Siri this year, essentially confirming what it’s been publicly promising all along.

To be clear, this doesn’t deny Bloomberg’s reports that Siri’s internal work is behind schedule. She has not officially commented on these claims, either positively or negatively.

The renewed commitment Apple gave to CNBC reiterates what Apple has promised publicly several times before. Since last year, the company has been telling customers to expect the long-promised but delayed Siri features (first announced during WWDC 2024) to be available to customers sometime in 2026.

These features include augmenting Siri with personal context, supporting rich in-app actions, and on-screen awareness, so users can seamlessly ask their iPhone’s voice assistant questions about what they’re looking at and perform relevant contextual actions.

While 2026 has been the public timeline, many sources suggest that Apple intended to finally get these features out for iOS 26.4. A Bloomberg report revealed that this target is unlikely to be met.

When it finally arrives, these are the first Siri features to support Google Gemini models behind the scenes, as a result of the partnership Apple and Google announced earlier this year.

Apple is expected to be even more ambitious for iOS 27 with a new Siri chatbot based on core models based on the latest and greatest versions of Google Gemini.

But if the more primitive stuff is running late, maybe the iOS 27 stuff will be delayed, too. In a fast-moving market like artificial intelligence, investor confidence relies on Apple catching up as quickly as possible.