Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, unveiling a major overhaul of its Siri voice assistant, now powered by Google's Gemini technology. [2, 7] The revamped Siri is more conversational and can understand personal context from a user's apps to perform complex, multi-step tasks. [8] The announcements are part of a broader push into artificial intelligence, branded as "Apple Intelligence," which will be integrated into the new iOS 27 and other operating systems to offer features like advanced photo editing and text generation, with an emphasis on on-device processing for privacy. [3, 11]
The event marked the final WWDC keynote for CEO Tim Cook, who is stepping down in September. [6, 9] The focus on AI is seen as a critical move for Apple as it aims to compete more aggressively with rivals like Microsoft and Google in the generative AI space. [19] Apple also announced that iOS 27 will allow for the integration of third-party AI models, having internally tested services from Google and Anthropic. [1]