The Wait for an AI-Powered Siri Is Going to Be Longer Than Expected

If you were hoping that all those “Apple Intelligence” features showcased during WWDC 2024 would make their way to your iPhone sooner rather than later, I’ve got some bad news for you. The best you can expect to see the new and improved Siri is 2025. Plus, you’ll need the latest, most expensive iPhone to test everything, including ChatGPT.

Apple didn’t give an exact date for any of its Apple Intelligence talks during Wednesday’s dev conference. The Cupertino tech giant mentioned some Siri features won’t be around until “next year,” but the vagaries are purposeful. iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, watchOS 11, and all the new features like a cool, pen-enabled calculator app and head-nod gestures on AirPods are slated for this Fall. The initial OS betas will arrive sometime in the next few months.

Apple promised in a press release that Apple Intelligence will be available in the upcoming iPhone, iPad, and Mac software betas. However, “some features, software platforms, and additional languages will come over the next year.”

Which features? When next year? We probably won’t know until we get there. We now know some of these AI features will be restricted to the $1,000 iPhone 15 Pro models and iPads and Macs with M1 chips or later. The AI language features will be constrained to English at the start. Users may also need to sign up for a waitlist to get access, according to code found in the iOS 18 dev beta as spotted by MacRumors.

Now, it is expected that some features will be restricted to hardware, such as the new satellite messaging being made available on satellite-enabled iPhone 14 or later. But let’s consider how ChatGPT will work in the cloud, meaning there won’t be nearly as much of a neural processing requirement to run OpenAI’s chatbot.

And still, Apple confirmed with Gizmodo that ChatGPT, and any other Apple Intelligence features, will only be restricted to iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, along with the modern slate of Macs and iPads.

As for the more intuitive, multimodal, cross-app AI that will turn your iPhone into a true assistant, that seems like a feature that will take time. Apple already mentioned Siri’s promised “somatic understanding” features, which let the AI control look through your phone’s data and apps. Still, they won’t be around until next year. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, New Siri is missing from the first iOS 18 developer beta.

Perhaps that “Image Playground” AI art generator feature and the “Genmojis” will also show up on the most expensive, latest iPhones. Writing Tools and ChatGPT integration will likely be first on the list to hold Apple fans over until the true Siri-based Apple Intelligence model fits into place. Based on their Android phone availability, the new Magic Eraser-like tool in Photos also seems like a shoo-in. We expect these will probably feature prominently on the upcoming iPhone 16 models when we see them roll out this Fall.

Apple didn’t want to use the term “AI” during its presentation, but the company knew it existed. Apple’s VP of software and apparent parkour expert Craig Federighi said in a video interview after the big tech conference that “we think AI’s role is not to replace our users but to empower them… it needs to be integrated into the experience you’re using all the time.”

Apple’s big promises to have the most private on-device AI with its “Private Cloud Compute” are some of the big promises Apple’s making with its Apple Intelligence. The problem is that you’ll need to be willing to pay a high asking price to even dream about testing them when they finally arrive.