Tim Cook’s last Worldwide Developers Conference as Apple CEO opened on Monday with a sweeping overhaul of the company’s digital assistant – a makeover that the company hopes will close the gap with rivals while keeping privacy at its core.
Siri AI, as the new version is called, will draw from a user’s past interactions, understand images and apply broad-world knowledge to become a more capable and conversational assistant. A new app, similar to those offered by OpenAI and Anthropic, will also feature. The announcements came amid widespread scrutiny over “nudification” apps, prompting Apple to unveil a suite of changes to its trust and safety features designed to keep children safer when using its products.
“Apple unveils Siri AI overhaul at Tim Cook's final WWDC, promising privacy-focused assistant and new child safety features.”
But the most unusual moment came during the keynote of Craig Federighi, Apple’s perpetually sunny senior vice president of Software Engineering, who levelled a rare public critique of “AI for the sake of AI without considering the people it’s supposed to be able to serve.” “We believe that truly helpful AI must be centered around you and your needs,” Federighi said, adding that the Siri AI experience was designed with privacy in mind “at every step.”
Cook, who has been CEO for 15 years, will be replaced in September by John Ternus. Ternus was a major presence at WWDC but did not speak at Monday’s main keynote.
Apple’s introduction comes after criticism that the company has fallen behind other tech giants in artificial intelligence. “Apple had to address its shortcomings in AI, and WWDC provided some answers,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at industry analyst firm FDM CCS Insight. “The company must now prove that its privacy-led, integration-first approach can translate into a meaningfully better everyday experience, not just parity with rivals.” He added that success would “come down to user reaction when new capabilities are in their hands.”
A beta version of Siri AI will be released later this year for supported devices set to English – but not in the European Union. “Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants,” Apple said in a news release. Earlier this year, the company partnered with Google to roll out Apple Foundation Models based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology.