Apple delays some AI-powered Siri upgrades until 2026

Apple said on Friday that some artificial intelligence improvements to its voice assistant Siri, originally slated for a 2025 release, will now be postponed until 2026.

The tech giant revealed that it has been developing a "more personalised Siri", which will give it "more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps."

In a statement, iPhone maker noted: "It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year."

However, the top mobile manufacturing company did not provide a reason for the delays.

Last year, Apple announced a range of AI-driven features called Apple Intelligence that included new capabilities such as rewriting emails and summarising a cluttered inbox.

Some of the biggest improvements were aimed at giving its Siri assistant the ability to duck in and out of apps and complete tasks for a user by tapping into information stored on Apple devices.

Apple gave examples such as asking Siri to pull up a podcast recommended by a friend or pulling up flight tracking information from a relative, all based on data held on the device.

The company has been building a vast new cloud computing infrastructure that runs on its own chips in an effort to maintain its privacy stance while delivering AI features. Apple has said Siri fields 1.5 billion user requests per day.

Apple's rivals have also been rushing to add AI features to their voice assistants, with Alphabet's Google adding its Gemini model to its assistant last year.

Last month, Amazon rolled out an AI-driven overhaul of its Alexa assistant, saying that the new capabilities would be free for subscribers to its Prime program but cost $19.99 a month otherwise.