Apple (AAPL) on Monday unveiled the next-generation version of its personal assistant, Siri, as part of the company’s global developer conference, aiming to bring long-neglected digital helpers into the AI era.
The new Siri, called Siri AI, and enhancements to the company’s Apple Intelligence platform are central to Apple’s efforts to reset its AI strategy after a series of delays led to criticism from investors and users.
Apple’s pitch: Personal and private AI. In the company’s keynote, Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, said Apple’s products are more purposeful than those of competitors who add AI to their products.
This approach aims to differentiate Apple’s AI from the likes of OpenAI’s (OPAI.PVT) ChatGPT and Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude by focusing on mainstream rather than AI power users.
“This feels like AI for the masses,” Bob O’Donnell, founder and principal analyst at TECHnaracy Research, told Yahoo Finance.
“They’re talking to the mainstream, they’re talking to consumers. Ironically, even though we’re at WWDC, they’re not trying to focus on developers,” he added.
IDC analyst Francisco Geronimo echoed similar sentiments, saying in a statement that consumers are less interested in the ins and outs of an AI model and more interested in what AI can do for them.
“Apple is making AI native, useful, and invisible across the devices people already use every day,” he wrote.
“This is important because the winning AI experience for consumers will not be the loudest or most technically complex; it will be the one that understands context, respects privacy, works reliably across apps, and reduces friction without forcing users to change their behavior,” Geronimo added.
In a demonstration, Mike Rockwell, Apple’s vice president of Siri engineering, who has overseen Siri’s reinvention, showed how Siri AI can understand a person’s context by pulling data from the Messages app without having to open it.
During the demo, Rockwell asked Siri, “What are you guys bringing to the barbecue?” The assistant then ran through the data available on the device and provided a list of what attendees said they would bring.
Additionally, when asked what drinks would go with those items, Siri provided a list of alcoholic and non-alcoholic options.
However, Apple is not the only company offering such functionality. Google (GOOG, GOOGL) offers Gemini AI on both its Pixel smartphones and Samsung’s Galaxy devices, which can perform similar actions.
