Siri AI Rebuilt for WWDC 2026 With Google Gemini Powered Apple Intelligence Integration New Text Based UI and Multimodal Camera Features
WWDC 2026 lead story is the total re build from the ground up of Siri, and is now referred to as Siri AI. Gone are simple, commands, in is an advanced, contextual, and intelligent companion to your device which, powered by Apple Intelligence, runs natively throughout your whole Apple ecosystem.
Behind this is a wide, ground up, infrastructure level deal with Google to build Gemini s models directly into Apple Intelligence for sophisticated multi step reasoning.
Although much of Siri AI can be done on device locally and securely (for everyday tasks) Apple has leveraged Google Gemini to handle powerful cloud based queries and in depth contextual parsing. Additionally, system wide settings allowing for external alternative models such as Anthropic s Claude, or OpenAI s ChatGPT, to be switched on, or be directly switchable within the system work flow.
Leaving the full screen glowing orb of previous generations, Siri is now a text based communication app complete with entire chat thread histories that can be seamlessly, and securely, sync d to your iCloud, support for uploading images and/or documents and has automatic chat history deletion.
Siri AI can now actually see your world. Leveraging integration with the native camera application it can draw contextual information and immediately derive structural information from a picture currently in the photos application allowing you to parse text, extract complex data tables, log new data into applications, or pull up location specific data automatically.
Developer Note: Apple's core AI framework has been opened up, allowing iOS and macOS developers to map custom application tools directly into the new Siri interface.