In a recent interview with the media, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, responded to the outside world's doubts about the company's launch of an independent Siri application in iOS 27, explaining the reasons behind Apple's shift from its previous opposition to "independent chatbots" to the launch of the Siri chat application.
At WWDC 2026 held earlier this week, Apple officially released a new Siri application, which provides users with a centralized portal to manage and review conversations with Siri AI. This application will be launched with iOS 27. Federighi directly responded to questions about Apple's strategic "turn" during a post-meeting exchange with the media at Apple Park.
After last year’s WWDC 2025, Federighi and Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Joswiak emphasized in media interviews that Apple’s strategy is to deeply weave Siri into users’ existing workflows, rather than hanging an additional “chatbot” on the side. The public statements of executives at the time were seen as Apple’s intention to draw a clear line between pure chat products such as ChatGPT.
Federighi said this time that the final decision to launch a standalone Siri application was mainly due to a very practical user need-users need to be able to go back to past conversations and continue to communicate or quote on this basis. From Apple's perspective, the most natural way to provide an entry point for such needs on its platform is an app icon that can appear on the home screen. He emphasized that the Siri application is an extension of the system experience, not a separate independent product.
Federighi reiterated that Apple does not regard Siri as a "separate chatbot", not a place that is disconnected from the system and where users "go to chat", but a conversational tool that is called in the context of use and deeply integrated with the system experience. In his description, the new version of Siri can understand the current screen content and provide proofreading help, modification suggestions or tips directly in the document the user is editing, rather than outputting answers in another "parallel world."
Regarding the positioning of Siri applications, he explained that all these experiences are conversational in nature and are a natural extension of the system experience, rather than setting up an independent product line. But when the user wants to return to a previous conversation, continue to ask questions, or check the information, an application that can be managed and opened on the home screen is still the most suitable method for users, so Apple ultimately chose to host this entrance in the form of an "application".
Federighi said the new Siri app "rematerializes" capabilities that originally existed at the system level, presenting them in a form that's easier to manage and access. From Apple's perspective, this is not a negation of the previous strategy, but a pragmatic adjustment to user interaction methods while retaining the core premise of "deep system integration."
Currently, the iOS 27 developer beta is open, and developers can install it and experience it. However, you'll need to join a waitlist in system settings to use the new Siri feature, and a public beta is expected to launch in July.