Apple’s WWDC 2025 is just a few weeks away, and there’s reason to be excited. Apple is rumored to give the iPhone a big redesign via iOS 19. The same goes for the iPad and Mac.
Rumors say Apple wants a more uniform design experience across the board. iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16 will be even more similar than before. The new design should be inspired by visionOS.
Apple Intelligence will be the big elephant in the room, as Apple will somehow have to address this year’s big misfire while also moving forward with new AI features.
However, the “SiriGPT” version of ChatGPT, or an Apple chatbot of its own, might not be unveiled at the show even if it’s supposed to come to iOS 19 at some point in the distant future. A new repot says that Apple is still working on fixing its AI strategy, which involves a more cautious approach to announcing new features.
Apple detailed an incredibly Siri experience at WWDC 2024, saying the assistant will have access to on-device data for better responses and be able to perform actions in apps. The feature would not be ready by September 2024 but would be released during the iOS 18 cycle.
Apple sold the iPhone 16 as Apple Intelligence-ready phones.
Then, a few months ago, Apple had to admit that the Siri experience it wanted to offer iPhone users with supported hardware would not be ready this year. It might take a while for that Siri variant to come out. It was a rare, humiliating misfire from a company not known to announce features that take longer to ship.
Soon after Apple said the Siri AI versions unveiled at WWDC 2024 would not be available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac in 2025, we started learning more details about the inner workings of Apple’s AI teams, which showed the various issues Apple has been dealing with internally.
A new report from Bloomberg (via The Verge) indicates that Apple is still fixing its AI strategy and roadmap as it struggles to catch up with rivals.
The report notes that Apple execs, including Craig Federighi, were reluctant to invest in AI because they didn’t see the endgame. That uncertainty is not common at Apple, which knows exactly where it’s heading with its products.
Apple AI chief John Giannandrea supposedly believed people didn’t want AI chatbots, and iPhone users might develop tools like ChatGPT. He was obviously wrong, and I say that as a longtime iPhone user who is also a longtime ChatGPT user. I can’t go back to using the internet without a chatbot on hand, and that includes Apple devices.
I’d love a Siri LLM that can do what ChatGPT does, but I’ll have to wait for that to happen.
Due to Apple’s delays in investing in AI, including buying the expensive GPUs needed for development and actually developing a working SiriGPT, we’ll have to wait longer for Apple to deliver one.
Gurman said in his blog that Apple won’t spend time at WWDC 2025 talking about significant upgrades to Siri, whether it’s the ChatGPT-like experience or the features Apple announced last year.
That’s actually not a bad idea, considering what happened last year. Apple shouldn’t make the same mistake twice, allowing marketing to get ahead of development. Instead, Apple should announce new AI capabilities for Siri whenever it’s ready, whether it’s last year’s experience or ChatGPT-like functionality.
Remember that everyone else in the genAI space releases new AI products and upgrades when they’re ready. Those launches are spread throughout the year and won’t always coincide with big developer events. Take this week’s Google I/O 2025 event that will probably be dedicated to AI announcements. Google will lay the groundwork for various new products, but it’ll continue to upgrade Gemini between this year’s I/O edition and the next.
The Bloomberg report says that Apple continues to work on the Siri LLM version, but it’s building the Siri chatbot from scratch. Apple wanted to give the curent version of Siri ChatGPT abilities, but those efforts failed. The Siri chatbot is supposedly coming from an AI team in Zurich.
Training the Siri chatbot will involve collecting user data from iPhones using a differential privacy technology that doesn’t remove user data from the iPhone. Instead, Apple will compare fake training data with language on the iPhone (like the Mail app) on-device. The synthesized data will go back to Apple for training.
Apple is supposedly considering collecting online data with the Siri model to improve its chatbot abilities. This would turn the Siri AI into an online AI search engine of sorts, similar to Perplexity.
None of this is official, of course. But I’m certain Apple has what it takes to catch up to rivals in the AI race, no matter how long it takes or whether it makes any big Siri announcements next month.
If Apple manages to bring the Siri LLM to iOS 19 before WWDC 2026, I’m sure the company will host some sort of special events to announce its own chatbot. But will Apple actually catch up to ChatGPT, Gemini, and everyone else by next year? That seems hardly likely.
