Is Siri slipping up? Report claims Apple's voice assistant fell behind Amazon's Alexa and became a 'major problem' due to management issues and lack of the 'big picture'

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Is Siri slipping up? Report claims Apple's voice assistant fell behind Amazon's Alexa and became a 'major problem' due to management issues and lack of the 'big picture'

• Apple's Siri digital assistant has struggled to compete with Amazon and Google
• A new report details how the once-promising product has failed over the years
• Poor management and decision making were to blame, the Information reported
• One former employee said the team considered scrapping Siri altogether

 

Apple, Amazon and Google have been dead-locked in a battle of the voice assistants for the past several years. 

But it's no secret that Amazon and Google have charged ahead with their respective services, Alexa and Assistant, while Apple's digital assistant Siri has lagged behind.  

Siri's troubled seven-year history is likely a result of poor management, slipshod decision making and an inconsistent vision at the company of what the product should be, according to a new report from the Information. 

At least a dozen former Apple employees spoke in detailed candor about how Siri was created and the drama that ensued among executives and engineers.

When Siri was launched alongside the iPhone 4s in 2011, it was considered a groundbreaking product. 

Siri can create reminders, schedule calendar events and retrieve information on restaurants and weather.   

Few, if any, other tech giants had released an intelligent voice assistant that could retrieve information for users with ease. 

But inside the company, the Siri team got in heated debates about just what exactly they wanted it to be able to do.

Some emphasized the need for a strong search element that could quickly and accurately give users information, while others believed it was more important that Siri be a conversational assistant, capable of more advanced tasks, according to the Information. 

Many people involved in Siri from the beginning cite Apple founder Steve Jobs' death as a tipping point in the product's failure. 

Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer the day after Apple introduced Siri. 

'When Steve died the day after Siri launched, they lost the vision,' an ex-employee said of Apple. 'They didn't have a big picture.' 

 

Apple told the Information in a statement that the company has made 'significant advances' in the product's performance, scalability and reliability. 

'We continue to invest deeply in machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually improve the quality of answers Siri provides and the breadth of questions Siri can respond to,' the company continued. 

Apple's voice assistant came about as a result of the company acquiring Siri, a mobile assistant app, for more than $200 million in 2010. 

Employees were brought over from Siri to work with other Apple staffers on rolling out an intelligent voice assistant. 

They had a grand vision for what the product could be.

'It was about making the App Store for AI,' one original executive told the Information. 'It was supposed to be a way to orchestrate the internet through conversation.'  

Instead, Siri was launched as a closed ecosystem and executives sparred over how it should be orchestrated. 

Former Apple employees admitted that the company rushed to get Siri ready for debut in the iPhone 4s.  

'After launch, Siri was a disaster,' Richard Williamson, an ex-Apple employee who led the Siri team for some time, told the Information. 

'It was slow, when it worked at all'

'The software was riddled with serious bugs'

'Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me,' he added. 

Dag Kittlaus, the man who made Siri, responded to Williamson's statements in a tweet on Wednesday, calling them false. 

 

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