Apple on Monday introduced Siri AI, a ground-up rebuild of its voice assistant, at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference held at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. The announcement came alongside iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, and matching updates across watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS, all expected to ship as free software updates this fall.
What Is Siri AI
Siri AI is powered by Google's Gemini model, marking Apple's most significant overhaul of its voice assistant to date. Apple says the update will make Siri more conversational, capable, and compatible with visual intelligence features. In addition to being integrated across Apple's ecosystem, Siri AI will also be available through a dedicated standalone app.
Key Features of Siri AI:
Deep integration across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro.
Ability to understand personal context by searching messages, emails, photos, and other content across the device.
Can perform actions across multiple apps on a user's behalf.
Responds to questions about content currently displayed on the screen.
Retrieves real-time information from the web when needed.
Dedicated Siri app uses iCloud to privately sync conversation history across devices.
Designed to deliver more natural, context-aware conversations and assistance.
Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, said the company was "delivering the next generation of Apple Intelligence across our platforms," adding that the updated Siri was intended to be "profoundly more intelligent, knowledgeable, and capable."
Alongside Siri AI, Apple announced performance upgrades in iOS 27, including faster app launches, photo processing, AirDrop transfers, and file browsing. The update also adds AI-powered features such as Spatial Reframing in Photos, Notify Me alerts in Safari, and smart reminder suggestions in Messages.
The features are available to developers from June 9, with a public beta expected next month. Siri AI will initially launch in English and will be supported on newer iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Vision Pro devices. The feature will not be available at launch on iOS and iPadOS in the EU, or in China, due to regulatory requirements.
Apple's WWDC 2026 marks CEO Tim Cook's last such conference with the company, after he announced he would hand over to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus on September 1. The event comes two years after Apple's first AI rollout was criticised for subpar technology and delayed features, with the company using WWDC 2026 to attempt a broader course correction, structuring the keynote to lead with fixes before new features.
Reports indicate Apple will pay Google approximately $1 billion annually to use a custom 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini large language model for the Siri update.
