A report suggests that internal testing hasn’t been going well with the new Siri and some features, including access to personal data, will likely be pushed back to iOS 26.5 and iOS 27.

The reporting around artificial intelligence and Apple has been a never-ending treasure trove of doomcasting for the company, but vague details of delays regarding unannounced products are nothing new. After Apple reassessed its Apple Intelligence features promised during WWDC 2024, it paused personalized intelligence in the hopes it could be better refined in the following year.

According to the report from Bloomberg, anonymous tipsters that have information related to the development of the upgraded Apple Intelligence suggest some features may be delayed yet again. These include Siri’s ability to access a user’s personal data, but the details on that delay are iffy.

As we’ve said at AppleInsider many times before, anonymous tipsters tend to leak information when they have an axe to grind. We have no idea how old the information is, why it was shared, or if it even reflects what is occurring internally.

The reported issues

It has always been unusual when these kinds of reports classify such things as “delays” when they’ve never been announced publicly. Only the industry insiders and the internal teams might classify them as delays, but in all reality, this is how development works.

Some things ship as expected, some don’t. Painting it as mounting internal failures seems odd given the same language isn’t used when Apple’s competitors make similar mistakes.

The tipsters say some features may arrive in iOS 26.5 or may get pushed back to iOS 27. The report says the key issue is that “Siri doesn’t always properly process queries or can take too long to handle requests.”

Feature flags for iOS 26.5 show “preview” functionality for the personalization features, but that may not actually mean the feature was delayed. A lot of additional toggles are available to Apple’s internal teams, not to mention the feature could launch in a beta state.

The report also claims that the way app intents tie to the revamped Apple Intelligence system could also be pushed back. Siri apparently also has a tendency to cut speakers off when they talk too fast, or has difficulty processing complex queries.

It would be very odd for both of those features to be missing in iOS 26.4, which has been highly reported as the release with the new Apple Intelligence. Those features make up the entire backend of the new system so delaying those would seemingly delay everything, contradicting those reports of an impending launch from the very same publication.

Internal struggles could be a bad sign, but what matters is what ships publicly

The new system also seems to still fall back to the ChatGPT integration even when unnecessary, but that could just be a bug too. These reports lack any detail about when these errors occurred beyond “as recently as January” or “late 2025 internal models.”

It’s an internal pre-public beta, there are going to be snags.

An impending launch

As always, the only way we can judge Apple’s efforts with the new Apple Intelligence and Siri is once a true announcement has been made. Everything before that is speculation colored by a desire to convey a narrative.

All Apple has publicly promised is that the renewed Apple Intelligence and Siri would arrive in 2026. They have internal goals of spring and iOS 26.4, and there is still something launching then, but the word “delay” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in painting this as a failure.

If iOS 26.4 and its features are a letdown, then there may be something to this doom and gloom report. If not, we can only speculate about which features were punted — perhaps ones related to AI and Apple Health.