Apple Sends Its Siri Engineers to AI Bootcamp

Apple has decided to take significant steps to improve its voice assistant Siri by sending dozens of its engineers to an artificial intelligence coding bootcamp. This initiative, reported by The Information, will take place over several weeks and comes less than two months before the company is likely to unveil a new Siri experience as part of a broader AI reboot.

Fewer than 200 engineers from the Siri team will participate in this intensive program, while about 60 members will remain focused on the ongoing development of Siri. Meanwhile, another group of 60 engineers will be tasked with evaluating the current performance of the voice assistant. The report also indicates that AI has gained popularity in certain divisions of Apple, prompting some teams to allocate a significant portion of their budgets to Claude Code.

The initiative comes as Siri, once at the forefront of voice assistants, has lost ground to its competitors. Apple had initially planned to launch a more advanced version of Siri, powered by AI, in 2025 as part of its Apple Intelligence program. However, the launch has been pushed back to spring 2026, with executives deeming the current version insufficiently reliable for the market.

This strategy marks an attempt by Apple to recalibrate expectations around its AI strategy, following several delays in its ambitions for Siri. John Giannandrea, Apple's former head of AI, is expected to leave the company this week after resigning from his position in December.

The new version of Siri is set to be unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8. According to a report from Bloomberg in March, this version will be integrated into iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and MacOS 27 later this year. Apple is currently testing a reimagined Siri to function more like an autonomous AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT or Claude, rather than as the current integrated tool.