Apple Says Personalized Siri Features Shown at WWDC Last Year Were 'Real' and 'Working'

Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak are on a media tour this week, following the WWDC 2025 keynote.

iOS 18 Siri Personal Context
The latest interview comes from The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern, who sat down with Federighi and Joswiak to discuss Apple's delayed personalized Siri features.

Stern asked the executives if Apple had a working version of the more personalized Siri when the company demonstrated the features during its WWDC 2024 keynote.

According to Federighi, it did.

"We were filming real working software, with a real large language model, with real semantic search, that's what you saw," said Federighi.

"There's this narrative out there that it was demoware only," added Joswiak. "No."


Federighi also gave the same answer about why the personalized Siri features were delayed as he did in another interview. In short, there were quality issues, and Apple is shifting to a newer underlying architecture for Siri to overcome that.

Apple first announced the personalized Siri features during its WWDC 2024 keynote. The new capabilities will include better understanding of a user's personal context, on-screen awareness, and deeper per-app controls. For example, Apple showed an iPhone user asking Siri about their mother's flight and lunch reservation plans based on info from the Mail and Messages apps. Apple said it currently plans to release the features in 2026.

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Top Rated Comments

Royksöpp Avatar
12 weeks ago
I don’t know, it’s hard to trust a guy that wears shirts like that.
Score: 35 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TigerNike23 Avatar
12 weeks ago
Not mentioned here or anywhere else is the best way to prove something works is to have a live keynote to show things off.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
surferfb Avatar
12 weeks ago
I can buy that they had it working in tightly controlled environments with good data and thought they’d figure it out in a few months.

Now given the state of Siri, why they thought they could figure it out in a few months is a whole other question.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
lk400 Avatar
12 weeks ago
It seems fairly believable that they were real and working at the time, in that one could ask a question and get a response. But very likely they were completely inaccurate. Think about it, Apple shipped their notifications summaries that would put completely made up news headlines next to the logo of major news outlets. How bad must have the working Siri model been? Hey Siri, who is this guy I’m talking to, I’ve forgotten his name because I was distracted by my phone?

That’s George Washington, you met him last year at the snowboarding event in the 1956 summer Olympics in Paris.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MacUserFella Avatar
12 weeks ago
Good one, Apple
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hieranonymous Avatar
12 weeks ago
"There's this narrative out there that it was demoware only," added Joswiak. "No."

I wonder how burned the bridge with Gruber is. Like, will there be water under it by next year?
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)