Apple AI Just Got a Huge Overhaul at WWDC 2026. Here's the Lowdown

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Apple's WWDC 2026 had its biggest moment yet for artificial intelligence. And that includes the software conference two years ago when the company first dropped its AI, named Apple Intelligence.

The WWDC keynote, kicked off by outgoing CEO Tim Cook, aimed to fulfill many of the promises the company has made about its AI. The biggest news is about the emergence of the smarter, AI-enabled Siri.

All of these updates will be available with the next generation of Apple software, most prominently in iOS 27. The iPhone software is expected to be widely released this fall, after the beta versions go out this summer. You'll need an iPhone with the necessary computing juice that can run Apple's AI, so iPhone 16 models or newer will be compatible, along with a couple of iPhone 15 Pro models.

Watch this: Everything Apple Unveiled at WWDC 2026

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Siri, Siri and more Siri

Siri is the cornerstone of the new Apple Intelligence, wherever it appears in Apple's apps and devices. Apple has been promising to use AI to make a smarter Siri since it launched Apple Intelligence back in 2024. And it's paid the price for its delay, including a $250 million court settlement announced last month. Now, we finally have a clear picture of what Apple's AI-enabled assistant will be able to do -- even if we don't yet have a solid launch date beyond "in beta later this year."

For starters, even the name is changing: Meet the new Siri AI. This version comes with its own app and new customizations, including new voices you can choose from. Siri AI will be in your iPhone, Mac, Watch, CarPlay and even in your AirPods.

"This is very much the Siri that Apple first hinted at two years ago, but this time fully realized," CNET's Principal Writer Katie Collins reports. "But the real test -- whether it meets the expectations of people dreaming of a true digital personal assistant -- is still to come."

Siri AI is more conversational. It remembers what you asked it previously, so you can chat with it like you would a friend -- or more likely, an AI chatbot -- so it keeps up with a long string of prompts. It can take action to do searches across your device, the web and ChatGPT. In the example shown in Apple's WWDC keynote, you can have Siri search the web for info on the World Cup games and send your friends a custom invite only using voice prompts.

Siri AI also gets a boost from Visual Intelligence, the company's technology that lets AI interact with images and videos. It also has improved personal context, which means it can use the info in your apps -- like calendar, mail and so on -- to customize its answers. Siri AI will only be available in English at launch, and it may not be available in the EU and China due to regulatory concerns.

Spatial reframing, photo editing and AI slop

Spatial reframing may sound like a chewy piece of jargon, but it's a new way to literally reframe your photos, thanks to visualization tech drawn from the Vision Pro headset. You can touch, drag and shift the perspective of a photo as if you're moving a camera around -- after the photo has already been captured. AI fills in the gaps to create an edited photo.

Three images of a woman sitting in grass where the composition has changed using Apple's Spatial Reframing tool in iOS 27.

There's also a new Extend tool that lets you resize any photo and have AI fill in the gaps. It looks similar to Adobe's generative expand, if you've used that. There's also a new Siri mode in your camera app. The AI won't tell you how to take the photo, but it should understand what you're pointing it at to give you more information, identify objects or suggest actions, like splitting a bill while looking at a receipt.

Perhaps the AI update I'm most excited about is a promised refinement of the Clean Up tool. This existing AI editor can remove distracting objects or the random photobomber. It's great in theory, though I can attest that there are many instances where the removal isn't precise, or the AI replacement isn't seamless.

"Our goal for bringing AI into the Photos app is to help photographers enhance their images in ways that respect the original moment," Alok Deshpande, Apple's director of camera and photos software engineering, said in Apple's presentation. We'll have to wait and see if that's the case.

If you want to let AI take the reins entirely with your imagery, the new Image Playground is ready for you. Apple's creative AI hub is getting new AI models to create better images, including more photorealistic ones and, hopefully, less AI-sloppy ones. It's also getting better editing tools, like the ability to highlight specific elements, resize designs and edit with text prompts.

Siri AI and Gemini

Google's Gemini is one of the most capable and popular artificial intelligences on the market -- and therefore one of the biggest competitors to Apple in that arena -- but the two tech titans teamed up to build new foundational AI models for Apple, based on Gemini technology.

These on-device models should be multimodal, which means they can understand speech, pictures and videos as well as text.

Apple's biggest selling point for its own AI is its privacy promises. AI and privacy mix as well as oil and water, which means there are major privacy concerns, particularly for sensitive tasks involving your finances and health care. When Apple launched its AI in 2024, it did so with its private cloud compute infrastructure, designed to not store your data or chat logs when they're processed off-device.