Babak Hodjat, one of the original creators of the natural language processing technology that became Siri, has offered his perspective on why Apple has failed to achieve a breakthrough in the current AI era despite its early lead in voice assistants. Hodjat, who served as chief technology officer at Dejima—a startup he co-founded with colleagues from Kyushu University in Japan—developed agent-oriented AI technology that became foundational to the CALO project, a large-scale U.S. government-funded AI research initiative. In 2007, a team of engineers from CALO launched a startup called Siri, which Apple acquired three years later and integrated into the iPhone in 2011. Hodjat was not involved in the company after the acquisition. Now chief AI officer at Cognizant, Hodjat believes Apple missed a critical opportunity by focusing too heavily on the visual and audio design of Siri rather than the quality of its responses and conversational intelligence. "Apple seemed to focus on the 'look and feel' of Siri over improving the underlying answers it gave," he told Business Insider during an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon. Hodjat emphasized that the original vision for the technology was modality-agnostic. "When we started at Dejima, modality to us was secondary. You can talk, you can type—what matters is the context and the interaction," he said. He noted that while voice interaction with devices like phones or smart speakers can feel awkward, it's not inherently impractical. "It is surprisingly easier to talk to your car, maybe because it moves and its headlights look like eyes, than it is to your fridge," he added. Despite the growing discomfort some users feel, voice assistants are expected to reach 148.7 million users globally in 2024, according to EMARKETER, a sister company of Business Insider. Siri is forecast to have around 87.3 million users this year. However, Apple has struggled to modernize the assistant to meet the expectations of the AI era. The company delayed a major Siri overhaul earlier in 2024, and reports suggest it is now close to a deal with Google to use the Gemini model to power some of Siri’s new features. Hodjat called such a partnership a "smart move" for Apple—but only if the company follows through. "They keep changing their minds on this thing," he said, expressing concern that Apple’s inconsistent strategy may undermine its long-term goals in AI. For Hodjat, the key to success isn’t just in the interface, but in building a truly intelligent, responsive, and reliable assistant that can understand and act on user needs—something he believes Apple has yet to fully deliver.