According to the Financial Times, Job’s Mob is struggling to retrofit Siri with large language models that can handle more than just setting reminders and mishearing your mum’s name. Recently exiled employees say that trying to integrate LLM into Siri has revealed shedloads of bodged coding that has been there from the start and has caused bugs galore. Unlike OpenAI, which built its assistant properly from scratch, Apple has been approaching the issue with duct tape,  wishful thinking and number eight fencing wire. 

“It was obvious that you were not going to revamp Siri by doing what executives called ‘climbing the hill’,” said one former Apple executive, referring to the company’s hopelessly incremental approach to development. “It’s clear that they stumbled,” the person added.

Apple had big plans to pump its iPhones full of what it dubbed “Apple Intelligence,” a shiny suite of AI features meant to flog more overpriced gadgets. But delays and embarrassments have piled up. Its AI rollout in China, done in partnership with Alibaba, is jammed in regulatory mud. Meanwhile, consumers still haven’t seen the flagship Siri revamp actually materialise.

JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee said that it was the time where Apple needed to put up or shut up. “We’re at the point where investors already know what the good news potentially is, and it’s about: let’s first have you deliver what you promised last year.” 

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street have not taken kindly to the faffing about. Apple stock is down 18 per cent this year, making it the worst performer in the so-called Magnificent Seven. By comparison, the Nasdaq has more or less gone nowhere.

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene, one former senior Apple employee said “the way companies were doing conversational interaction was changing rapidly, and it was clear Siri was coming up short.” The person admitted they were “surprised” that Job’s Mob had publicly promised features that were “not going to make it” to release which shows the level of naivety among Apple staff.

Job’s Mob has been telling its chums in the Tame Apple Press that Siri’s failings are because it is obsessed with privacy. Its AI features are meant to run on-device through smaller models, which sounds noble but apparently makes the tech even harder to get working properly. OpenAI and Google, by contrast, run their smarter assistants through the cloud like normal people.

However, Chief executive Tim Cook finally came clean, admitting the technology did not meet Apple’s “high quality bar” and was “taking a bit longer than we thought.” Which, judging by how often Siri still bungles basic commands, must be buried somewhere beneath the carpet.

Internal changes are now being made. Apple’s AI boss John Giannandrea, who joined from Google in 2018, has seen the Siri team shifted to Mike Rockwell, best known for that overpriced ski mask called the Vision Pro. Some insiders blame fragmented leadership and a lack of money thrown at the problem. Others just think Job’s Mob didn’t take AI seriously until it was way too late.

Now it’s leaning on OpenAI integration to keep Siri vaguely useful while rivals like OpenAI, Google and even Perplexity launch assistants that actually know what they’re doing. Adding insult to injury, OpenAI has snapped up IO, the hardware firm started by former Apple designer Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion deal. Apple shares dropped two per cent on the news.

Bank of America analysts wrote that “Apple is essentially three years or more away from delivering a truly modern AI assistant, long after Google and others have integrated such tech.” So if you're still waiting for Siri to get clever, don’t hold your breath. By the time Job’s Mob catches up, your dishwasher might be telling you your personality problems to ten decimal places.