Apple (AAPL.US) plans to release a long-delayed Siri artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade in the spring of 2026, marking a key step in its transformation in the field of AI.

According to people familiar with the matter, Apple's Siri team is working to bring the revamped voice assistant to the market as part of the iOS 26.4 system update. This long-awaited upgrade will enable Siri to call up users' personal data and screen activity information to respond to user needs more accurately.

According to Apple's internal software development cycle practice, the ".4" version update (internal code name "E") is usually released in March each year, and this year's iOS 18.4 and 2024's iOS 17.4 both follow this rule. However, people familiar with the matter said that the company has only determined the spring release window, and no specific date has been finalized.

In response to a request for comment, Apple said that it has not yet announced a specific timetable for the new Siri function, only reiterating its previous statement that the upgrade plan will be launched in the "next year".

The project timeline is still subject to variables. A person familiar with the matter said that if development goes well in the next few weeks, the company may consider previewing the feature at the launch of the new iPhone in the fall, but no final decision has been made yet.

This upgrade is long overdue. Apple originally announced the next-generation Siri features at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June last year, aiming to inject new vitality into the voice assistant, which has gradually fallen behind AI tools such as chatbots since its launch in 2011. The technology under development also includes a system called "App Intents" that allows Siri to more accurately control applications and built-in operations across Apple devices.

If the latest schedule is followed, the new version of Siri will take nearly two years from official announcement to official launch. The delay has attracted much attention because its features were included in the marketing promotion of the iPhone 16 last year, when the Siri upgrade was far from ready.

According to people familiar with the matter, Apple's internal AI team and marketing department are shirking responsibility. The engineering team accused the marketing of over-hyping the features, while the marketing department insisted that it was acting on the timeline provided by the AI team.

In addition, the company is still debating the balance between self-developed AI functions and opening them to partners such as OpenAI, and has discussed the acquisition of small AI startups.

Apple originally planned to launch the Siri upgrade with the new iPhone in the fall of 2024, but later postponed it to the spring of 2025, and planned to include it in iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.5 updates. In March of this year, the company announced that the function would be postponed indefinitely until "sometime next year." Earlier reports said that the main reason for the delay was that the technical failure rate was as high as one-third.

The core technical difficulty is that in iOS 18, Siri's core architecture is divided into two - the basic functions use the old system, and the upgraded functions use the new platform. The vulnerabilities caused by the integration of the two architectures forced the team to completely reconstruct Siri.

The crisis triggered a major earthquake within Apple, resulting in the removal of John Giannandrea, senior vice president of AI, from all consumer-facing product supervision responsibilities, including Siri and secret robot projects. At this week's developer conference, Giannandrea was unusually low-key, in stark contrast to his high-profile promotion of the "Apple Intelligence" platform last year. People familiar with the matter said that his influence within the company has declined, and some executives believe that he should focus on the underlying AI research in which he is good at.