Apple’s revamped artificial intelligence stack and a revamped Siri were front and center at Monday’s WWDC keynote, making it clear that, this time around, it’s do or die for Apple AI. The keynote itself and the announcements that followed were all about Siri and Apple Intelligence, with platform improvements and child safety updates a blip in the hour-long broadcast. Given the relentless industry hype around AI and Apple's missteps there so far, no one should be surprised. Apple Intelligence itself is a two-year old AI effort that fell so flat that it led to a lawsuit arguing Apple lied to the public about Siri’s capabilities, ostensibly granted by Apple Intelligence features. According to the lawsuit, Apple Intelligence, and the Siri improvements it was supposed to bring, were just an excuse for Apple to sell new iDevices that it claimed were the only ones able to support the new features. Unsurprisingly, Apple is taking a page out of Google’s playbook. The company did sign a massive deal with The Chocolate Factory earlier this year to make Gemini the foundation of its new foundation models, which Apple highlighted early in the keynote address. Yes, it's calling its new Apple Intelligence models its own foundation builds, but Google Gemini was cited as being a core part of its own AI development in recent months. Apple AI can now do things that Android devices have had for some time, like understanding image, voice, and text context, and can turn things like Safari extension development and Shortcut building into natural language processes. Siri itself, as the communication front-end for Apple Intelligence, has been renamed "Siri AI" and is getting a standalone app a la Gemini. It can now have back-and-forth conversations, and the like, and all of a user’s conversations and requests synced to their iCloud account to make them accessible across devices. A new preview page has the full rundown, but suffice to say if you’ve used a Google-branded Android device with a modern version of Gemini built in ,you’ll be familiar with most of what Apple came out with. It’s not groundbreaking or game changing, but it is a bit of feature parity that Apple has failed to keep pace on since the original Apple Intelligence disaster. This time around, Apple made it clear from the start that it's rolling out Apple Intelligence features and Siri upgrades to devices that already exist, so please don’t rush out and spend money and then sue ‘em when you’re not happy. Sure, some of its top-tier on-device AI features are going to be limited to the iPhone 17 line, iPhone Air, iPad M4 or later, and Mac M3 or later (12GB of memory minimum for covered iPads and Macs), but the rest of the features are available on older devices. By older, we mean the iPhone 16, iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max series, iPad Mini A17 Pro, and iPad and Macs with an M1 or newer, so not that old – but at least you don’t need new hardware to use the AI and Siri improvements on the iOS 27 series. That said, Siri isn't shipping with the iOS 27 dev beta that dropped today – you'll have to join a waiting list. And advance apologies to European iUsers: Siri AI isn't coming to the EU quite yet, with Apple blaming the Digital Markets Act, saying that Brussels "did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants." This opportunity comes once twice in a lifetime These new AI features will actually need to deliver on what Apple promised back in 2024, with potentially damning consequences if it fails again. Not that Apple hasn’t been trying to repair its reputational dent: The company shuffled its AI leadership in the wake of the 2024 Apple Intelligence failure earlier this year, with Apple AI chief John Giannandrea replaced by ex-Google Gemini chief Amar Subramanya. Overall AI direction was passed off to SVP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, earlier this year too. Federighi’s going to have a lot to answer for if this goes wrong. Most important, there's a new boss in town – this was longtime CEO Tim Cook's last WWDC keynote before former hardware engineering chief John Ternus takes the reins this fall. Cook had a tremendously successful tenure at Apple from an operational and fiscal perspective, but the company didn't innovate as significantly under him as it did under Steve Jobs' second go-around, and Ternus has a huge opportunity to position Apple as the more human face of technology in general, and AI specifically, once again. Analysts were optimistic about Apple’s AI and Siri revamp announcements, but also retained a bit of caution. Francisco Jeronimo, IDC’s VP of client devices, described WWDC 2026 as a credibility test for Apple AI. “Apple does not need to win AI by having the biggest model or the loudest demo,” Jeronimo said in emailed comments sent to The Register. “It needs to make AI trusted, useful, and invisible across the ecosystem.” Jeronimo believes Apple has done that based on what he saw during the keynote, calling attention to the company’s mention of private cloud and on-device AI as an attempt to improve AI trust, and interaction with Apple’s various operating systems as a way to make it a seamless part of the iExperience. “Apple didn't come out with every possible AI/smart assistant feature,” IDC research director Ramon Llamas added, pointing to the lack of agentic AI announcements. “But it did highlight that it intends to be a major player.” Other analysts similarly praised the announcements for showing that Apple isn’t chasing the hot new AI trends and is focusing on things that’ll actually be useful for its users, changing Apple’s ecosystem for the better by trying to blend AI into everything users do on its devices, and making AI feel private and useful for mainstream users. One word kept coming up alongside the accolades, though: “if.” Apple has left industry watchers skeptical, in other words. No pressure, but Apple’s near-term success or failure appears to be entirely in the hands of Subramanya, Federighi, and their teams. With the developer betas of iOS, iPadOS and macOS out now, the next few days will be big ones for Apple and its hordes of fans. ®
