Apple’s AI promises are finally, almost, sort of, here

Apple kicked off its annual developer conference with bold promises about AI. The company, CEO Tim Cook said, would be “introducing new technologies and innovations that push the limits on what’s possible.” But its slew of announcements — centered on a brand-new “Siri AI” — had more to do with catching up. After almost entirely neglecting Siri and punting its AI promises down the road in 2025, Apple went all in on the tech this year. It pitched Siri as an all-encompassing virtual assistant that ties together all your Apple devices, with multimodal features, a dedicated app, an all-in-one AI agent and more. Executives emphasized privacy again and again, saying that unlike many of its competitors, user data involved in agentic tasks would be processed on-device and via “private cloud compute” and then done away with. Unlike Microsoft , Apple isn’t trying to prove it can go head-to-head with the likes of OpenAI or Anthropic unaided; its new Siri is fueled by Apple foundation models powered chiefly by Google Gemini. Instead, Apple marketed AI as a pragmatic, helpful addition to the devices people already own. “Some appear to be racing forward, pursuing AI for the sake of AI… at Apple, our mission has always been to turn the potential of advanced technology into helpful and intuitive products for everyone,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering. …