GoKawiilTwo years after first revealing its plans for Apple Intelligence and a smarter Siri that never fully materialized, at WWDC, Apple just revealed a new set of AI features and a smarter, more personalized Siri.
Apple calls Siri AI an “entirely new version of Siri” and says it’s both more conversational and more capable than the previous version of the smart assistant. In conversations, it has a more expressive voice that can be customized by pace, expressivity, and accent.
Siri AI will be accessible systemwide, capable of reading what’s onscreen and interacting with your apps. But Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi said it was designed “with privacy at every step.” Queries are all either processed on device or in the cloud via Apple’s Private Cloud Compute.
Screenshot: Apple
The updated Siri AI is being rolled out across Apple’s ecosystem, with support on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. On iPhone, you’ll now be able to access Siri AI by swiping down from the Dynamic Island, in addition to existing ways of accessing the assistant. On Macs, it can be accessed from Spotlight, while Vision Pro users will simply have to look directly at a new Siri visualization — in this case, a floating orb hovering around your field of vision — to be able to start a conversation without saying “Hey, Siri.”
Siri is also getting its own app, which looks similar to existing AI chatbot apps for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. There’s a conversational interface for text or voice conversations with a saved history that lets you dive back into previous conversations. Those conversations will be synced with your iCloud, allowing you to begin a discussion on one device and pick it up seamlessly on another.
Screenshot: Apple
Siri AI is based on new Apple Foundation Models, which the company says were built in collaboration with Google. It can interact with apps across your device, answering questions based on content, suggesting actions based on image content drawn from your camera, and helping you manage writing messages and managing your calendar. It’s mostly all things we’ve seen before, from Gemini on Android phones or third-party AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, so it still mostly feels like Apple is playing catch-up.
Apple has overhauled the Photos app with new AI image-editing options too. Some of these options feel familiar, like an improved Clean Up for removing unwanted elements and an Extend tool that generates content to expand the edges of an image. Spatial Reframing is a little more novel: Based on Apple’s work creating spatial photos for Vision Pro, it allows you to reframe a photo by dragging to move the “camera,” changing the angle of a photo or the framing of its subject. Apple says this should work with almost all the photos in your library, including those taken on other cameras. Apple says photos edited this way will include a hidden SynthID watermark to mark them as AI content.
Screenshot: Apple
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