Apple just gave 'Siri AI' its biggest upgrade ever — whether i Phone users asked for it or not | Tech Radar

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Apple just gave 'Siri AI' its biggest upgrade ever — whether i Phone users asked for it or not

Apple's AI comeback is less about what customers want and more about where the industry is heading

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Tim Cook has just brought down the curtain on his final WWDC as Apple CEO — and much of the keynote was devoted to fixing one of the few stains on his otherwise remarkable Apple legacy: Apple Intelligence.

Cook knows Apple didn’t get it right the first time. Now he’s gone all out to fix that with the new i OS 27 sporting a fully AI-powered Siri that acts more as a proper digital companion rather than just a voice assistant. In a way, WWDC 2026 was his swan song as he’s about to pass the reins of Apple over to its next CEO, John Ternus, on September 1.

The new Gemini-powered Siri AI is packed with new features: it can look and respond to whatever is on your screen and dig deeper into apps via Voice Control. It can bring in data from your calendar, emails, contacts and notes when writing responses.

Drag your finger down from the top of the i Phone and you enter a new ‘Search or Ask’ interface for Siri AI. From here you can launch apps, write text messages, add events to your calendar, search the web using AI and more. It all adds up to being able to use Siri as the phone interface in a way that wasn’t possible before.

The same is true for its use of AI in photo editing — while previously Apple seemed to show distaste for AI being used to alter photos in a way that looked real, now it has embraced it. You can now use generative AI to manipulate your photos, with features such as 'Extend', 'Enhance' and 'Reframe' that enable you to manipulate photos in a realistic way. Image Playground can now make realistic AI images.

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Siri’s AI overhaul will be ‘different’ to Apples’ rivals — but ‘unfinished’

And all these new, enhanced, AI features and Siri AI will work across all Apple’s operating systems, so everything is integrated for the Apple user that is fully invested in the Apple ecosystem.

While the initial launch of Apple Intelligence might have bombed, let’s not forget that Apple’s previous AI woes have done nothing to affect Apple’s bottom line. In April, Apple posted Q2 revenue of $111.2 billion, up 17 percent year over year. At the same time the i Phone achieved a revenue record, fueled by demand for the i Phone 17 lineup.

That’s simply outstanding, and shows that the company is still a massive revenue-generating machine. People still love i Phones despite Apple Intelligence, not because of it.

In a way, Apple’s push for stronger AI in its products is an odd one, because it’s clear that people will buy them regardless. But Apple’s big fear must be that if it doesn’t act on AI now then it will eventually start to be more than just an existential threat to its i Phone sales. It can’t afford to let competitors such as Google and Samsung get too far ahead.

If you ignore the Apple gloss for a minute and stop to think about it, the new fully-integrated and AI-powered Siri in i OS 27 is, in fact, nothing revolutionary. The ability to search using AI, write emails, ask questions, etc, are all things that you can already do in apps like Gemini, Claude and Chat GPT — they’re just being made more accessible.

i OS 27’s new AI voice controls could finally make Siri feel smart

I asked Siri if it knew what to expect at WWDC 2026 and its answer was so predictably disappointing — I really hope Apple can fix this

The thing is, tiny changes in user experience can result in massive differences in how intuitive and easy to use a device feels. Apple knows this all too well, and it’s leveraging its decades-long expertise on phone design to produce an experience that will take what people already love about the i Phone and make it better, or so it hopes.

Of course, we won’t really know if Apple's second run at AI is a success until the features launch and we get to use them day in, day out, which will be when the next i Phone is due to be released in the fall. The only question left is, do we trust Apple to get this right?

As the healthy sales of the i Phone 17 show, it’s not that people are crying out for more AI features on their phone. And at times it feels like we’re all caught in this spiral of inevitability with AI: we have to have more of it because… we have to have more of it.

And as the growing backlash to Google turning search into an AI-first experience, or the negative reaction to graduation speakers extolling the virtues of AI show, people don’t necessarily like AI.

Apple's first attempt at AI faltered because it promised a future that wasn't ready. This time Apple looks far better prepared. But whether customers were asking for an AI-first i Phone is another question entirely. Apple seems to have decided that question no longer matters.

The only thing left to discover is whether users embrace the change, or simply learn to live with it.

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Graham is the Senior Editor for AI at Tech Radar. With over 25 years of experience in both online and print journalism, Graham has worked for various market-leading tech brands including Computeractive, PC Pro, i More, Mac Format, Mac|Life, Maximum PC, and more. He specializes in reporting on everything to do with AI and has appeared on BBC TV shows like BBC One Breakfast and on Radio 4 commenting on the latest trends in tech. Graham has an honors degree in Computer Science and spends his spare time podcasting and blogging.

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