Apple · 2026-06-08 · major
Apple Unveils Rebuilt Siri at WWDC 2026 — Standalone Siri AI App With Conversation History Lands Across iOS 27, macOS 'Golden Gate', iPadOS, watchOS, and visionOS, and the Foundation Models Framework Gains Image Input for Third-Party Swift Apps
Apple shipped a redesigned Siri at Tim Cook's last WWDC keynote: a standalone Siri AI app with persistent chat history, voice plus typing, screen-aware visual intelligence, and developer access to multimodal Foundation Models.
WWDC 2026 turns Siri into a real chatbot app and opens Apple's Foundation Models framework to image-aware third-party Swift apps.
What is it?
Apple's keynote unveiled a redesigned Siri with a dedicated 'Siri AI' app on iOS 27, iPadOS, macOS 'Golden Gate', watchOS, and visionOS, plus an expanded Foundation Models framework for developers. Users get a chat history they can revisit, the ability to type or speak, a Dynamic Island animation, and screen-aware features that can describe images and text on display. Tim Cook framed it as Apple's biggest Apple Intelligence push since the platform launched.
How does it work?
Apple Intelligence runs on a new generation of Apple Foundation Models — a hybrid stack of on-device models and a larger cloud variant served through Apple's Private Cloud Compute. Per Engadget and CNBC reporting from the keynote, the cloud model is a custom variant trained in collaboration with the Google Gemini team. The Foundation Models Swift framework, first opened at WWDC25 for text, now accepts image input so third-party apps can call Apple's on-device 3B vision-language model directly instead of bundling their own. The dedicated Siri AI app activates via 'Hey Siri', the power button, or a swipe down from the home screen.
Why does it matter?
Apple Intelligence has been the slow-moving piece of the Apple platform story since 2024, with a $250M class action over delayed Siri features just settled. Today's release ships the long-promised conversational Siri to the developer beta and opens the on-device models to any Swift app, which converts Apple's ~2B-device installed base into a distribution channel for Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini through iOS 27 Extensions — and for first-party Apple AI everywhere else.
Who is it for?
iOS and macOS developers, AI app builders, Apple ecosystem watchers
Try it
Developer beta available today via developer.apple.com; public beta in July