Apple’s AI promises are finally, almost, sort of, here

Apple kicked off its annual developer conference with bold promises about AI. The company, CEO Tim Cook said, would be “introducing new technologies and innovations that push the limits on what’s possible.” But its slew of announcements — centered on a brand-new “Siri AI” — had more to do with catching up. After almost entirely neglecting Siri and punting its AI promises down the road in 2025, Apple went all in on the tech this year. It pitched Siri as an all-encompassing virtual assistant that ties together all your Apple devices, with multimodal features, a dedicated app, an all-in-one AI agent and more. Executives emphasized privacy again and again, saying that unlike many of its competitors, user data involved in agentic tasks would be processed on-device and via “private cloud compute” and then done away with. Unlike Microsoft, Apple isn’t trying to prove it can go head-to-head with the likes of OpenAI or Anthropic unaided; its new Siri is fueled by Apple foundation models powered chiefly by Google Gemini. Instead, Apple marketed AI as a pragmatic, helpful addition to the devices people already own. “Some appear to be racing forward, pursuing AI for the sake of AI… at Apple, our mission has always been to turn the potential of advanced technology into helpful and intuitive products for everyone,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering. “Truly helpful AI must be centered around you and your needs.” As tech companies desperately look for ways to make AI seem less threatening, Apple’s strategy fits right in. But after years of delays, the new Siri still won’t arrive until later this year, when it launches in beta (and there’s no timeline at all for the EU and China, something Apple blames on regulatory difficulties). The features largely mirror things other companies have already introduced. And it’s not clear if the payoff for Apple’s years-late AI strategy will be worth the wait. The new Siri is supposed to frictionlessly pull together information from the internet, emails, texts, contacts, notes, and calendars, working with first-party apps and external tools alike. Apple suggests asking it when you’re free for a hangout with a friend and cutting off some of the back-and-forth of scheduling, or letting it add calendar appointments and draft texts or emails (and, perhaps creepily, mimic the writing voice you use with the recipient, like your boss vs. your best friend). The always-controversial Dynamic Island will display new AI-powered information cards from world events, weather, and your own calendar and reminders. Onstage demos showed off multi-step processes like asking when a musician’s next show is, then setting a reminder to buy tickets and playing one of their songs, or creating a recipe list for a World Cup watch party and sending an invitation via text message to a user’s group chat — including the (clearly AI-generated) menu. One especially interesting feature, which was announced long ago but is now coming to fruition, is Siri’s on-screen awareness. In a WWDC presentation, Siri head Mike Rockwell looked at an Instagram photo of a nature spot, asked Siri where it was, then asked it to compare the location with a friend’s new address — which wasn’t saved anywhere and had only been mentioned once in text messages with said friend — and create a driving route with a stop at the friend’s new place. It worked. (Which is more than can be said for my current experiences with my iPhone’s bizarre text-message search.) The company went further overall into visual intelligence, allowing for AI-edited images in more styles and integrating Siri into the Photos app — users can look at an REI backpack and ask if a certain pair of boots will fit into it, or if the backpack will work as a carry-on for a specific flight that’s already been booked. Other interesting features that could actually make consumers’ day-to-day lives easier: Apple Intelligence can tame your Safari tabs in entirely new ways, apparently. You can use the “describe an extension” feature for certain webpages to get Siri AI to vibe-code for you. A one-tap solution will allow Siri AI to update eligible accounts with strong passwords. There will be in-text one-tap prompts for the agent to create reminders (for example, if your friend texts you to bring their jacket when you hang out tomorrow), or to send somebody all photos you took of them on a given day. If you call an airline, Siri AI will surface a little card on the phone call screen with your relevant flight information — something Apple clearly understands could seem unsettling, adding a disclaimer that Siri bases this purely on who you’re calling, not what you say on the phone. If all this actually works, Apple could make real headway in the AI agent race for the very same reasons Google is well-positioned to do so. It’s poised to attract users who won’t download a separate app or accept even minimal friction — Siri will be directly integrated into messages, a conversation with the agent will look just like an iMessage thread, and an “Ask Siri” button will make its existence even more obvious. And for some, Apple’s reputation for privacy and security could help mitigate the creepiness factor of agents — Federighi told the WWDC crowd that “privacy in AI is a non-negotiable” and that user data will only be used to process user requests. Overall, though, Apple has consistently been behind in the AI race. The company botched its initial Apple Intelligence rollout so badly that delays led to a class-action settlement, and it had to pause AI notification summaries after falsely telling users that Luigi Mangione shot himself. Last year, it debuted a handful of small, functional updates powered by both Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT, designed to help it catch up to other AI heavyweights in live translation, search, visual intelligence, and more. Some were useful, but few made big waves. This year was more exciting, but Apple’s new features are still unquestionably derivative. Pretty much every AI company has a multimodal chatbot like Siri, or a coding assistant like Apple’s Xcode. Siri AI conversations can sync across different Apple devices, but so can most other chatbots in some form — Google in particular emphasized cloud syncing at this year’s I/O. Even the operating system Siri AI was announced alongside, macOS Golden Gate, shares a name with a viral Claude research demo. And unlike Google, Microsoft, and other major competitors — who are heavily courting enterprise users that can pay for pricey subscriptions — Apple’s AI strategy remains relatively modest. It’s using the tech to complement its existing products, not fundamentally changing what those products are. One year after Federighi told audiences at WWDC 2025 that Apple was “continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,” the company has finally set a timeline for delivering what it promised — but if those promises pay off, it will be thanks to the strength of Apple’s overall ecosystem, not the novelty of its AI tools.