Hey Siri, how did Apple's early lead in AI turn into a race to catch up?

Apple helped popularise voice assistants, then fell behind as rivals raised the bar. Fifteen years after Siri's iPhone debut, a long-delayed overhaul puts its comeback to the test.

When Apple brought Siri to the iPhone in 2011, talking to your phone still felt like something out of a science-fiction film.

You could ask it to set an alarm, send a message, find a restaurant or check the weather, without navigating menus and apps. For a company that had already changed how people used their phones, Siri suggested that voice could become the next big interface.

But Apple's early start did not secure its future. Amazon and Google expanded the possibilities of voice assistants, while ChatGPT later changed expectations of what a conversation with a machine could do.

Apple is now trying to close that gap with Siri AI, which it unveiled in June 2026 and began rolling out in September. Here's how Apple's AI assistant went from pioneering the voice-assistant era to falling behind in the age of generative AI and why Apple thinks it can finally catch up.

2010-11: Apple gives the iPhone a voice

Siri grew out of artificial intelligence research at SRI International, which spun the technology out into a standalone company in 2007. Apple acquired Siri in April 2010 and integrated it into the iPhone 4S in October 2011.

The assistant could understand everyday language to set reminders, send messages, search for information and answer questions. Siri helped bring voice assistants into the mainstream and gave Apple a head start over the rivals that would soon follow.

2014-15: Amazon brings Alexa into the home

Amazon introduced the Echo speaker and Alexa in November 2014, giving voice assistants a place in the home beyond the smartphone.

In 2015, it opened Alexa to outside developers and device makers, allowing them to add services and build the assistant into other products. Alexa's capabilities included controlling smart-home devices, turning voice into a way to operate more than a phone.

2016: Google makes conversation the pitch

Google introduced Google Assistant in 2016, drawing on years of work in search, speech recognition and understanding users' questions.

The company designed the assistant around an ongoing conversation, with requests and follow-up questions helping users find information and complete tasks. Google's search and mapping services gave it a strong foundation, increasing the pressure on Apple to make Siri more useful.

2018: Apple ropes in Google's AI chief

Apple knew it had an AI problem. In 2018, Apple hired John Giannandrea, Google's former head of search and AI, to lead machine learning and AI strategy. But hiring one of the industry's most respected AI executives could not by itself solve a deeper problem.

Apple had hired an experienced AI leader, but hiring alone was not enough. Siri needed to improve as rival assistants added new features.

2022: ChatGPT changes everything

Then OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, and the benchmark for an AI assistant changed almost overnight.

People were no longer just asking an assistant for information or giving it commands. They were having conversations with it.

ChatGPT could explain complicated ideas, write emails, brainstorm, summarise documents, write code and answer follow-up questions while maintaining context.

Compared with that, asking Siri to set a timer suddenly felt like a relic of another era.

And the competition was only getting tougher. Google's Assistant was evolving towards Gemini, while newer AI systems were moving beyond simple voice commands towards reasoning, conversation and eventually completing more complex tasks on behalf of users.

Siri was now caught between two worlds: the traditional digital assistant and the new generation of generative AI assistants.

2024: Apple promises a more personal Siri

Apple finally made its big move at WWDC 2024 and introduced Apple Intelligence with the promise of a much more capable Siri AI, and brought ChatGPT natively to Siri on Apple devices.

The new Siri would understand requests more naturally, maintain context between questions, understand what was on the screen, and use personal information to provide more relevant answers. Most importantly, Apple said Siri would be able to take actions across apps -- the Siri people had been waiting for.

There was just one problem. It wasn't ready and wouldn't be for two more years, which upset a lot of Apple loyalists. So much so that Apple users filed a class-action lawsuit against the company over claims of false advertising about Siri's AI capabilities.

2025: The comeback slips

In March 2025, Apple delayed the more personalised Siri features it had showcased the previous year. The delay was a major setback because Apple had already shown users what the new Siri was supposed to do.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple execs said that the company was "rebuilding Siri from the ground up" and that they didn't want to "rush out with the wrong features and the wrong product just to be first".

Meanwhile, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI assistants were moving ahead at a much faster pace.

Apple also changed the leadership of the Siri effort, with Mike Rockwell taking over the project from Giannandrea.

2026: Siri gets a fresh start, with Google's help

At WWDC 2026, Apple unveiled what it called Siri AI. This time, Siri finally felt like a genuinely intelligent assistant.

The new Siri can understand personal context, recognise what is on the user's screen, search the web for information, hold conversations with the user, and perform actions across apps.

Instead of saying, "Siri, set a reminder", users could potentially say something much closer to: "Remind me about that thing I was discussing with Rahul yesterday."

The assistant is supposed to understand what "that thing" refers to.

In our testing of the new Siri AI, it handled these kinds of requests reliably most of the time -- a major upgrade from the Siri users had grown accustomed to over the years.

Apple has also put privacy at the centre of Siri AI, using a combination of on-device processing and its Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, alongside its own foundation models and partnerships.