Siri’s true AI moment has finally arrived.
Apple on Monday announced a long-awaited and long-delayed overhaul of Siri, aiming to make a comeback in the AI race.
“Today, we’re introducing a completely new version of Siri: Siri unlocked by Apple Intelligence,” Mike Rockwell, vice president of engineering, said at the company’s 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference. “We call it Siri AI.”
The new Siri AI exists within Apple’s software ecosystem, but also as a standalone app. Siri AI will be released in beta later this year, but not initially in the European Union or China, said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.
New Siri standalone app. Apple/Business Insider
The underlying architecture for the new Siri is the result of Apple’s partnership with Google earlier this year. New features will be released in English and will be released in other languages.
Rockwell indicated that Siri uses a variety of AI-powered features, including the ability to search for things like previously submitted addresses or photos from a specific location, “using personal context.” As an example, Rockwell showed how Siri can find the specific photo you want and share it with a group without opening the Photos app.
Mike Rockwell shows off new Siri features at WWDC 2026 Apple/Business Insider
Siri has an all-new voice experience that “makes Siri’s voice incredibly expressive.” Rockwell said users can also customize how expressive they want Siri to be. In addition to voice improvements, Rockwell said Siri’s dictation has also been improved with “significantly increased accuracy.”
The Siri update is just one of a series of AI-enabled features that Apple plans to introduce as part of an overhaul of Apple Intelligence, including the ability for iPhone to gather context during calls, reframe photos after they’re taken, and recognize faces on home cameras. Apple says some of the new AI features will include daily usage updates.
After suffering product development delays, Apple reached an agreement with Google in January to include Siri’s artificial intelligence capabilities in Gemini.
Federighi detailed the company’s “close collaboration” with Google.
“Together, we created the next generation of Apple Intelligence models,” Federighi said in a WWDC livestream.
Siri troubles cause embarrassing delays
If some of this sounds familiar, that’s because a lot of it is.
In 2024, Apple announced a major update to Siri, promising a more “natural” and “personal” assistant powered by Apple Intelligence. But then development problems arose.
By March 2025, Apple had taken the highly unusual step of announcing that it was delaying the Siri refresh.
That complicated Apple’s marketing efforts. Apple also pulled a September 2024 ad featuring “The Last of Us” star Bella Ramsey. In the ad, Ramsay uses Siri’s AI to pull information from a calendar app to remember someone’s name.
Last month, Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it of misleading customers about the availability of AI-enhanced features.
Wall Street analysts are closely monitoring Apple’s AI announcements. This will also be Cook’s last WWDC as CEO, and one of the last big opportunities for the legendary executive to reshape Apple’s AI struggles.