Can Apple catch up in AI and fix its embarrassing Siri digital assistant?

Apple CEO Tim Cook
Apple, once a pioneer in consumer technology, has notably lagged behind in the AI revolution, trailing rivals like xAI, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, who have surged ahead with advanced generative AI and robust language models. While competitors integrate cutting-edge AI into their ecosystems, Apple’s AI efforts, particularly in regard to its digital assistant Siri, have been widely criticized as outdated and underperforming, often struggling with even simple queries and lacking the contextual understanding of modern AI systems. This gap has sparked concerns about Apple’s innovation pace, with Siri’s limitations becoming a frequent point of embarrassment for a company known for its polished user experience.
Joanna Stern for The Wall Street Journal:
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Hey Siri, will things get better soon?”
“According to the CDC,” Siri replied, “most people with a mild case of Covid-19 will begin to feel better after about a week.”
Welcome to Apple in 2025, where things could either get a heck of a lot worse or a whole lot more happily-ever-after. (And yes, that really is Siri’s answer when you ask if things will get better soon.)
Apple isn’t anywhere near the shortlist of companies leading the AI charge. Google. Meta. Microsoft. OpenAI. Every few weeks they share shiny new generative-AI tools and updates. Apple? At least it still makes the hardware to run everyone else’s cool stuff, right? (Insert Genmoji-me shrugging.)
Bloomberg and The Information report that Apple has made internal changes to clean up the Siri mess…
So what happens next? There seem to be two clear paths. APPLE FAILS AT AI or APPLE NAILS AI.

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MacDailyNews Take: While we lack confidence in the current management team that, after all, clearly missed GenAI in spectacular deer-in-the-headlights fashion and long ago lazily squandered their multiyear lead with Siri, failing to improve it in any meaningful fashion for well over a decade, hopefully Apple can, by some miracle, take the latter path and nail AI by throwing tons of cash at the problem, not only catch up, but lead, and also fix its Siri joke along the way.