Craig Federighi Says 'Building A Chatbot' Was Never The Goal, Promises Apple Intelligence's Focus Is To 'Meet You Where You Are'

Apple’s AAPL senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, says Siri won't morph into a ChatGPT rival anytime soon, insisting that ‘building a chatbot’ was never the company’s goal.

What Happened: Speaking to Tom's Guide after WWDC 2025, Federighi said that Apple Intelligence aims to "meet you where you are," weaving AI into familiar apps rather than forcing users into a dedicated chat experience to get things done.

Federighi acknowledged conversational bots can act "as a therapist" and help people "brainstorm, do all kinds of things," but added that a chatbot was never the plan.

“When some of these Siri capabilities I mentioned [last year] didn’t show up, people kind of went like, well… what happened, Apple? I thought you were going to give us your chatbot. Well, that honestly…was never our goal,” Federighi explained.

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Federighi said the company postponed last year's high-profile Siri revamp after testing showed version 1 "would not meet our customer expectations or Apple standards," a decision he called proof that "there's no need to rush out with the wrong features." Apple executives chose reliability over deadlines, warning it "would've been more disappointing to ship something that didn't hit our quality standard."

Why It Matters: The Apple SVP’s stance contrasts with OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who recently hailed ChatGPT as a "life advisor" teens consult before making big decisions.

Instead, Apple is rolling out on-device tools such as Call Screening and Hold for Me in the Phone app, plus Live Translate across Messages, FaceTime and calls, keeping the assistance "contextually relevant" inside each workflow. The same translation engine will appear across macOS Tahoe, iPadOS 26 and watchOS 26 this fall.

That said, Apple's stock slid for a second straight session as analysts called the WWDC 2025 announcements "incremental" and "too little, too late" on artificial-intelligence progress. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the lack of new AI features startled him, and Forrester's Dipanjan Chatterjee described the "silence surrounding Siri" as deafening.

Goldman Sachs, however, told clients to look past the sell-off, reiterating its Buy rating and $253 price target that suggests roughly 25% upside.

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