At WWDC26, Apple introduced its most anticipated upgrades to Apple Intelligence, bringing new AI experiences to users. The major upgrade includes new Siri AI, which the company claims to be “more personal, intelligent, knowledgeable, and capable,” along with a slew of AI features on Photos, the Safari browser, new AI-image generation capabilities, and more.
Apple Foundation Models and Google Partnership
The next generation of Apple Intelligence is powered by a new generation of Apple Foundation Models, custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models. These models run on both devices and servers via Private Cloud Compute, giving users access to frontier-level intelligence while ensuring their personal data remains intact.
Siri AI – New Siri Experience
Siri gets its biggest overhaul ever with Siri AI — a profoundly more personal, capable, and conversational assistant that comes with its own dedicated app across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro.
Here is what Siri AI can do:
- Screen awareness: answer questions related to the content on a user’s screen
- Dedicated Siri app: revisit past conversations or start new ones in one place, with iCloud syncing conversational history privately across all devices
- Personal, Context-Aware Answers: Siri AI can answer questions related to the content on a user’s screen, draw on personal context understanding to search across apps, and go out to the web to get up-to-date information using broad world knowledge and generate a helpful answer.
- Take action in apps: perform system-wide app actions across third-party and first-party apps
- Writing and Visual Intelligence tools — integrated directly into platforms for more contextual assistance
Siri AI (English only) is available for developer testing today across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27.
Photos Editing Gets an AI Upgrade
The Photos app gets a significant AI upgrade with three new tools:
- Spatial Reframing : reposition the perspective of a photo after it’s been taken, as if you moved the camera in the original scene, with real-time preview
- Extend: expand the edges of an image to give subjects more breathing room, fix a crooked horizon without cropping, or adjust the aspect ratio with AI filling in the missing parts
- Clean Up upgrade: remove distractions with better quality and more realistic infill, even in complex scenes
- Photos edited with Apple Intelligence will automatically include a hidden SynthID watermark to identify them as AI-edited.
Safari AI Upgrades
Apple Intelligence brings four new capabilities to Safari:
- Tab organisation: Safari automatically groups open tabs into relevant topics, like grouping all travel-planning tabs when you’re planning a trip
- Notify Me: Users can now ask Safari to monitor a webpage for changes like product restocks or price drops, and get notified when they happen
- Password upgrades: Passwords can now automatically fix weak or compromised passwords by agentically navigating websites to sign in and upgrade accounts to strong passwords
- Describe an Extension: Users can create a custom Safari extension by simply describing what they want, and Safari generates it right in the toolbar
New AI Image Playground
Image Playground gets a major upgrade with a new generative model running on Private Cloud Compute that can now create photorealistic images. Users can:
- Generate images in virtually any style, including photorealistic
- Modify images by describing changes, or by tapping, circling, or brushing to highlight objects to move or resize
- Use generated images for Lock Screen wallpapers and Contact Posters
- Choose aspect ratios for specific use cases like website banners or flyers
All AI-generated images automatically include a hidden SynthID watermark.
Smarter Communication and Scheduling
Apple Intelligence brings useful new features to Messages, Mail, Phone, and Calendar:
- Messages: one-tap suggestions based on conversation context, smart photo finding using keywords, locations, and people
- Mail: suggestions can now take action with third-party apps; Smart Reply draws on your personalised writing style
- Call Context: proactively surfaces relevant information like confirmation codes or reservation numbers when you call a business, runs entirely on the device
- Calendar: add or modify events just by describing them; Calendar identifies contacts, locations, and creates event titles automatically
Create Shortcuts using AI
With Describe a Shortcut, users can now build powerful automations simply by describing what they want. Apple Intelligence assembles the required steps automatically. Users can describe tweaks or additions, and the Shortcuts app adjusts accordingly.
Home App Updates
The Home app uses Apple Intelligence to:
- Group related accessory notifications into a single updating notification instead of multiple alerts
- Generate video descriptions across sequences of HomeKit Secure Video camera clips so users can understand what happened without watching every clip
- Enable search through camera clips to find specific moments like package deliveries
- Surface noteworthy clips at the top of the Search page automatically
Additional AI Features
- Automatic proofreading with an improved spelling and grammar suggestions system-wide
- Intelligent file and folder naming based on content
- Workout Buddy is now available in Spanish and works on Apple Watch without an iPhone nearby, with more fitness data for insights
- Genmoji quality improvements with the ability to describe changes
Accessibility Improvements
Apple Intelligence also powers a range of updates to accessibility tools, including VoiceOver, Magnifier, Voice Control, and Accessibility Reader. This was announced by Apple last month.
Availability
- These new Apple Intelligence features are available for developer testing starting today through the Apple Developer Program.
- A public beta will be available next month through the Apple Beta Software Program.
- General availability is set for this fall with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27.
- Siri AI is available for developer testing starting today on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27.
- Siri AI will arrive as a beta for users later this year, starting in English first.
- Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU on iOS and iPadOS, and it will not be available in China at launch.
Apple Intelligence is supported on iPhone 16 models or later, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPad mini (A17 Pro), iPad with M1 or later, MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), Mac with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3 when paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone.
Regarding the announcement, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, said,
At Apple, our mission has always been to turn the potential of advanced technology into helpful and intuitive products for everyone, and that has never been more important than today. Truly helpful AI must be centered on our users’ needs, deeply integrated into the products they rely on every day, grounded in personal context, and built with privacy at every step. That is our vision for Apple Intelligence. With useful features for browsing the web, expressing creativity, editing photos, and so much more, today marks a big step forward on our journey to integrate powerful AI into the core of our platforms and make our products even more personal and useful.