- Siri should be as good, if not better, than the competition. - Oh and I think, ultimately, it should be. That's certainly- - But it's not right now. - That's certainly our mission. - I'm here at Apple Park in Cupertino, and I just sat down with Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak. Here are a few bits of the interview where we talk about those Siri delays and the future of AI for the company. Stay tuned for the full interview soon. Last year, you announced a smarter AI-driven Siri. Where is she? - We had a really two-phase plan, two versions of an architecture to deliver a great Siri. And as we got into the conference, we had V1 working to do basic capabilities that we showed off at the conference. So we had some real software we were able to demonstrate there and show what was coming. But it didn't converge in the way, quality-wise, that we needed it to. We had something working, but then, as you got off the beaten path, and we know with Siri, it's open-ended what you might ask it to do and the data that might be on your device that would be used in personal knowledge. And we wanted it to be really, really reliable. And we weren't able to achieve the reliability in the time we thought. - But there was a working version of this? This wasn't just- - Oh yeah. Yeah. - Vaporware? - Oh, no, no, no, no, no, of course, no, we were filming real working software with a real large language model, with real semantic search. That's what you saw. - Okay. - Yeah, there's this narrative out there that, yeah, it was demoware only. No, it was- - Yeah. - It was again something we thought, as Craig said, would actually ship by later in the year. Look, we don't wanna disappoint customers. We never do. But it would've been more disappointing to ship something that didn't hit our quality standard, that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable. So we made what we thought was the best decision. I'd made it again. - It's great that you set this high bar, but you're also Apple. I mean, you've got more engineers, more cash than most companies, maybe any company. Why couldn't you make it work? - I mean, this is new technology. I think, when it comes to automating capabilities on devices in a reliable way, no one's doing it really well right now. And we wanted to be the first. We wanted to do it best. And like I said, we had very promising early results and working initial versions, but not to the level that, as we began living on it internally and feeling, were like, "This just doesn't work reliably enough to be an Apple product." So this stuff takes hard work, but we do see AI as a long-term transformational wave, as one that's going to affect our industry and, of course, our society for decades to come. We wanna get it right. There's no need to rush out with the wrong features and the wrong product just to be first. - So many people associate Apple and AI with Siri. - Mm hmm. - I mean, since plus 10 years ago now. - Sure. - And so there is a real expectation that Siri should be as good, if not better, than the competition. - Oh, and I think, ultimately, it should be. That's certainly- - But it's not right now. - That's certainly our mission. Yeah, but that's our mission, you know? We set out to tell people last year where we were going. I think people were very excited about Apple's values there, an experience that integrated into everything you do, not a bolt-on chatbot on the side, something that is personal, something that is private. We started building some of those and delivering some of those capabilities. I in a way appreciate the fact that people really wanted the next version of Siri, and we really wanna deliver it for them. But we wanna do it the right way. - When's the right way gonna come along? - Well, in this case, we really wanna make sure that we have it very much in hand before we start talking about dates for obvious reasons. - And will that include these features that you had previously announced and more? I mean, is this the effort to make Siri this more interactive AI companion? - Sure. Well, I mean, look, on the one hand, I would love to dish about my enthusiasm for our future plans. But that's exactly what we don't wanna do right now, right, to- - Makes sense. - You know, miss that expectations. We wanna deliver something great that you and all of our customers really appreciate. - You have mentioned Apple Intelligence a lot, and you know, to be honest, I'm not really a big user of Apple Intelligence. I'm using a lot of your competitors' products. Can you or will you keep up with that competition? - Well, again, it's important to realize our strategy's a little bit different than some other people, right? Our idea of Apple Intelligence is using generative AI to be an enabling technology for features across our operating system. So much so that, sometimes, you're doing things you don't even realize you're using Apple Intelligence or, you know, AI to do them. And that's our goal, integrate it. There's no destination. There's no app called Apple Intelligence, which is different than like a chatbot, which again, what I think some people have kinda conflated a bit. Like, "Where's your your chatbot?" We didn't do that. What we decided was that we would give you access to one through ChatGPT, because you know, we think that was the best one, but our idea is to integrate across the operating system, make it features that, you know, I certainly use every day. - And I think, I mean, AI is one of those massive technological waves, like the internet, like mobility. When you look at the internet, I don't think anyone was saying, "Gosh, Apple, I find myself using amazon.com, and I'm not using, you know, I use that a lot. Why don't you have one of those?" "I find this web search thing really useful. I'm enjoying, you know, streaming cat videos. I find this useful. Why is this not in your product?" Well, of course, the internet was vast. It was opportunity for many, many companies, for users to do a wide diversity of things. It was also a huge enabler for Apple, and I think Apple made the internet accessible in a lot of ways more than anyone. And it was super empowering for our customers and for our products. But that didn't mean that every experience that you might take on necessarily is gonna happen inside of Apple or ultimately happen with Siri. - Between you both, you have, I believe, around 60 years of experience at this company. - Yeah, yeah. - You've seen the company go through highs, through lows. Where do you think you are right now? There's a lot of sentiment that Apple is on its back foot here. - I think you're right to bring up that perspective, because I think when you have been through different waves, you're very accustomed to the ups and downs. And I think we're feeling really good right now. - And look, I hate to be naive, but I remember Steve had come back and he told us, "Look, what we have to do is create great products and tell people about 'em. And if we do that, everything else will work out." And it turns out, that is kinda the case. And we create great products, and we think our products are exceptionally great right now and keep getting better. And again, I'll hang onto that naive theory that if we build great products, we tell people about 'em, everything else will work out.