Apple has pulled an ad for the iPhone 16 that depicted a "more personal Siri," following the company's admission last week that it is delaying some of the Apple Intelligence Siri features that it originally expected to release in iOS 18.
English actor Isabella Ramsey starred in the now-private YouTube video, one of a trio published in September ahead of iPhone 16 pre-orders, in which they are shown asking Siri the name of a person they had a meeting with at a particular restaurant the previous month. The video was also unofficially shared on Instagram, which we've embedded below.
Apple had described the ad in the following way:
Equipped with awareness of your personal context, the ability to take action in and across apps, and richer language understanding, Siri will be able to assist you like never before.
Apple says that it is going to take longer than expected to roll out the more personalized Siri experience, and that these features will be rolled out "in the coming year."
The personalized Siri features that Apple is talking about were demonstrated at WWDC when introducing iOS 18, and they were expected to come out in an update to iOS 18. The functionality includes personal context, onscreen awareness, and improved app integration.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the Siri features "won't be released until next year at the earliest." Some people in Apple's AI division think the features could even be "scrapped altogether" and rebuilt from scratch.
There are apparently concerns within Apple that fixing Siri could require more powerful hardware, which would mean the company needs to reduce its feature set or make the models run more slowly on current devices.
