Samsung and Google Lead... Apple, the 'Latecomer in AI,' Faces Repeated Launch Delays

'Personalized Siri' Launch Delayed to Next Year
Considered a Core Feature of Apple Intelligence
Development Lags Behind Competitors... "Staff and GPU Supply Issues"

Apple is falling behind its competitors in the race for the artificial intelligence (AI) era. This comes as the company officially announced the delay of the launch of one of its planned AI features, the 'personalized Siri.' Some insiders even suggest that Apple’s AI development team is struggling with the development of related functions.

According to major foreign media and IT specialized outlets such as Bloomberg and 9to5Mac on the 10th, Apple released an official statement saying, "We expect the 'more personalized Siri' to be launched next year."

In the statement, Apple said, "We have been developing a more personalized Siri that better recognizes personal context, navigates apps, and performs tasks on behalf of users," adding, "It will take more time to deliver these features." However, Apple did not provide an explanation for the delay.

Personalized Siri is considered one of the core features of Apple’s generative AI brand, 'Apple Intelligence.' This is because Apple Intelligence emphasizes personalized AI. Personalized Siri operates by having AI models learn from the user’s personal data such as text messages, emails, calendars, notes, and photos. Based on this, it enhances its ability to respond to user requests in a customized manner. Siri, launched by Apple in 2011, is a voice assistant service that has so far supported only limited functions such as checking notifications, simple information searches, and message composition.

The industry had expected personalized Siri to be supported starting from the release of iOS 18.4 in early next month. However, Bloomberg reported that numerous bugs occurred during internal testing, causing the service to malfunction. Some speculate that Apple may need to redesign the personalized Siri feature from scratch.

The delay in launching personalized Siri is reportedly due to problems faced by Apple’s AI development team. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s AI development department is experiencing leadership issues, leading to continuous turnover of technical staff. The ongoing talent drain is causing setbacks in the development schedule. Additionally, it is reported that Apple has not secured sufficient semiconductors such as graphics processing units (GPUs) necessary for AI development.

As a result, there are evaluations that a red light has been turned on for Apple’s AI competition. This is because Apple’s AI feature support is already lagging behind competitors. Apple unveiled its AI system 'Apple Intelligence' at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 held in June last year. Apple Intelligence began support around the release of iOS 18 at the end of October last year, but so far it only supports English, limiting usage for domestic users. Apple plans to officially support Korean with the iOS 18.4 update scheduled for early next month.

On the other hand, Samsung Electronics announced the Galaxy S24 series in January 2024 along with its AI brand 'Galaxy AI,' and started supporting AI features immediately after the model’s release. Currently, the supported languages number around 20. The range of supported devices is also broader for Galaxy. Samsung has applied Galaxy AI features through software updates to older models such as the Galaxy S21 series. In contrast, Apple supports Apple Intelligence only on the two Pro models of the iPhone 15 series released in 2023 and plans to fully apply it starting with the latest iPhone 16 series. Google also equips Android smartphones, including Galaxy devices, with its AI service 'Gemini.'

Given that Apple’s AI adoption is significantly delayed compared to other companies, some speculate that Apple might additionally adopt external large language models (LLMs). Apple Intelligence fundamentally operates through its own proprietary LLM, but some tasks are routed through OpenAI’s ChatGPT. When Siri receives a question from a user and determines that ChatGPT can provide a better answer, it asks for the user’s consent before showing the response via ChatGPT. According to major foreign media, Apple is currently in discussions to incorporate other AI models besides ChatGPT, including Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s 'Claude.'