March 7 (Reuters) -

Some artificial intelligence improvements to Apple's ( AAPL )

voice assistant Siri will be delayed until 2026, the

company said on Friday.

In a statement, Apple ( AAPL ) said it has "been working on a

more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your

personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you

within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than

we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate

rolling them out in the coming year."

Apple ( AAPL ) did not give a reason for the delays. The iPhone

maker had previously indicated the features would come in 2025.

Last year, Apple ( AAPL ) announced a range of AI-driven features

called Apple Intelligence that included new capabilities such as

rewriting emails and summarizing a cluttered inbox.

Some of the biggest improvements were aimed at giving its

Siri assistant the ability to duck in and out of apps and

complete tasks for a user by tapping into information stored on

Apple ( AAPL ) devices.

Apple ( AAPL ) gave examples such as asking Siri to pull up a podcast

recommended by a friend or pulling up flight tracking

information from a relative, all based on data held on the

device.

The company has been building a vast new cloud computing

infrastructure that runs on its own chips in an effort to

maintain its privacy stance while delivering AI features. Apple ( AAPL )

has said Siri fields 1.5 billion user requests per day.

Apple's ( AAPL ) rivals have also been rushing to add AI features to

their voice assistants, with Alphabet's Google adding

its Gemini model to its assistant last year.

Amazon ( AMZN ) last month rolled out an AI-driven overhaul

of its Alexa assistant, saying that the new capabilities would

be free for subscribers to its Prime program but cost $19.99 a

month otherwise.