Internal Chaos Revealed, Reasons For The Failure Of Siri And Apple Intelligence To Be Dismantled

Apple Intelligence, still far from expectations (photo: dock. apple)

JAKARTA - A recent investigative report from The Information reveals the internal chaos behind Apple's failure to develop Siri's latest version through the Apple Intelligence project. Various technical changes, weak leadership, and internal conflicts are said to be the main cause of Siri's slow progress compared to competitors such as ChatGPT from OpenAI.

Apple had considered building two different language models: Mini Mouse to run directly on the iPhone, and Mighty Mouse in the cloud. However, Siri's leadership team then decided to only develop one large cloud-based model, before changing strategies again and again. This inconsistency frustrated many engineers and caused some of them to choose to leave the company.

The problem does not stop there. The work culture that is too relaxed, lack of ambition, and reluctance to take risks is referred to as the main source of Siri's stagnation. In fact, Apple's AI/ML team was dubbed AIMLess by its own employees, while Siri was considered like a hot potato which continued to be thrown between teams without significant improvements.

Other conflicts arise surrounding salaries, rapid promotions, and shorter work time for some teams, adding to internal tensions. Apple's AI chief, John Giannandrea, once underestimated ChatGPT at launch in 2022 and believes Siri can be upgraded with just the right training data and a better web screening strategy. However, in 2023, Apple banned the use of other company-made models for the final product, although Apple's internal models are still far behind OpenAI technology.

Meanwhile, Siri leader Robby Walker is more focused on minor improvements, such as eliminating the word 'hey' in an order of 'Hey Siri' a project that took more than two years. He even rejected the initiative to add empathy to Siri in order to respond to users who were experiencing an emotional crisis.

Apple also had time to develop a project called Link for Vision Pro, which aims to enable application control only through voice and support collaboration between users in virtual spaces. However, most of this feature was canceled because the Siri team failed to make it happen.

Most astonishingly, this report states that the demonstration of Apple Intelligence capabilities shown in WWDC 2024 events, such as Siri, who can read emails to detect flight schedules or design lunch routes through messaging applications and maps, turns out to be just engineering. Many members of the Siri team even admitted that they had never seen a working version of these features.

The only feature that is really active on test devices is the animation of colorful bands around the screen when Siri is used an achievement far from public expectations. This is a big change from Apple's previous approach, which only features that are really ready and approved by the marketing team.

However, new hopes emerged from Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell, who are now leading efforts to save Siri. Federighi is even said to have instructed Siri engineers to do whatever it takes to have the best AI features, including the possibility of using an open-source model from outside if it is necessary.

Apple is now at an important crossroads in AI competition, and their success will depend heavily on the extent to which they are able to change course and fix the internal chaos that has been hampering innovation.