At this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2026), Apple confirmed that a new generation of Siri AI with more contextual understanding will officially land on iPhone in 2026, arriving simultaneously with iOS 27, a full two years later than originally promised. This version is regarded as an important update for Apple in the field of intelligent assistants, marking its new starting point in the direction of "personalized AI assistants."
According to the introduction, the new Siri has not only been renamed Siri AI, but also has obvious changes in its presentation form: the previously displayed "rainbow border around the body" visual effect has been abandoned and replaced by a Liquid Glass effect that "jumps out" from the Dynamic Island area on the top of the iPhone, making the interaction more futuristic and holistic. In addition to traditional voice commands, Siri AI can now retrieve and integrate data across multiple apps to provide smarter responses to user questions.
The biggest highlight of this update is that Apple has finally brought Siri, which is “capable of contextual understanding and natural language processing,” to the forefront, enabling the more natural, multi-turn conversational interaction that users have long awaited. Apple said that Siri AI can better understand the context of continuous questions and combine in-app data to give answers that are more relevant to personal scenarios, thus taking a step closer to a truly "personalized assistant." The content of the WWDC conference is still being updated, and Apple also prompts users to refresh to get the latest information.
This "new Siri plan" dates back to 2024. At that time, Apple first proposed the idea of a "more personal new generation of Siri" and expected that even if it could not catch up with the official version of iOS 18, it would push an update in 2024. Subsequently, Apple internally planned to officially launch the new Siri through the iOS 18.4 update in March 2025, along with other Apple Intelligence features. However, related features did not appear as expected, and only a few minor improvements based on Apple Intelligence were implemented.
Since then, Apple has gradually realized that the project is more difficult than expected, and publicly admitted that it was "biting off more than it could chew" on the Siri AI project. In March 2025, Apple announced that the launch of the new Siri would be postponed indefinitely and would no longer give a clear schedule. Immediately afterwards, the company made significant adjustments at the senior management and team levels: John Giannandrea, the original head of Siri, was replaced, and Mike Rockwell, who was previously responsible for Apple Vision Pro, took over the Siri business and led the internal direction reorganization.
In order to make up for the shortcomings in engineering capabilities, Apple also organized a multi-week AI "vibecoding" training camp in April 2026. It plans to send nearly 200 engineers to participate to focus on improving AI-related coding and product implementation capabilities. Since then, official news about the new Siri has decreased significantly, and for a long time the outside world can only speculate on the progress of the project through scattered revelations.
The turnaround comes in October 2025. Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly stated at the time that the enhanced version of Siri would "launch as scheduled" in 2026. However, the timetable given by Cook is only "within 2026", which is equivalent to giving the development team a broad period of 365 days, rather than a specific release date. Along with multiple delays, Apple is also under pressure in the capital market: the company has been sued by investors for delaying Siri-related functions, accusing it of misleading in its product schedule and disclosure of AI progress. Ultimately, the class action lawsuit was settled in December 2025, with Apple Pay paying approximately $250 million to resolve the dispute.
After multiple rounds of delays, management adjustments, and large-scale internal skills reorganization, Apple now once again clarified the delivery window for the new Siri through WWDC 2026. To the outside world, Siri AI is not only a new feature on iOS 27, but is also regarded as an important touchstone for Apple's ability to reshape the reputation of voice assistants and narrow the gap with competing products in the era of generative AI.