Has a tech titan’s hubris met its nemesis? Leadership chaos and legal troubles expose struggles to tame the revolution it overlooked.

This week in May 2025, a comprehensive Bloomberg report has exposed the depth of Apple’s troubles with its much-hyped Apple Intelligence ecosystem.

The report details how the tech giant’s ambitious AI initiative fell significantly behind schedule amid leadership conflicts and technical challenges.

Some takeaways from reactions around the online chatter include:

  • Apple was caught unprepared by OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch in 2022, which prompted a rushed development of AI features under software chief Craig Federighi, who reportedly was initially “reluctant to invest heavily in AI”. Internal tests had revealed Apple’s chatbot was lagging 25% behind ChatGPT in accuracy.
  • The report identifies former AI chief John Giannandrea as absorbing much of the blame internally. Employees claim Giannandrea “lacked urgency” and had not pushed hard enough for resources. Apple has replaced him with Vision Pro head Mike Rockwell in March 2025.
  • Technical challenges proved insurmountable when Apple attempted to merge Siri’s legacy code with new AI capabilities. An employee had told Bloomberg reporters: “It’s whack-a-mole. You fix one issue, and three more crop up.”

One senior member of Apple’s AI team had described the situation bluntly: “This is a crisis.” The firm has pulled back marketing campaigns after promoting features that were not close to ready, resulting in several lawsuits alleging false advertising.

Moving forward, Apple has announced it is rebuilding Siri from scratch with a project codenamed “LLM Siri” developed by a team in Zurich. This new architecture will be “entirely built on an LLM-based engine” to make Siri “more believably conversational.” However, according to multiple sources, significant Siri upgrades are “unlikely to be discussed much” at this year’s WWDC: the firm has plans to separate the Apple Intelligence brand from Siri in its marketing.

The Bloomberg report indicates that Apple will now henceforth avoid announcing features more than a few months before they are ready to launch.