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Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote has wrapped up, and it marks Tim Cook's final hurrah as CEO. And he signed off in style, unveiling the tech giant's new features for iOS 27 — including the new AI-powered Siri as the star of the show.
The arrival of the new Siri voice assistant, dubbed Siri AI, and which now has a dedicated app, ends a two-year wait, after Apple initially announced it during WWDC 2024. Until now we've known very little about it, other than that Apple has enlisted the help of Google's Gemini AI models to power its new assistant.
Siri AI will arrive in English initially, with support for other languages coming in the future.
What's new in Siri AI?
It's safe to say that Siri AI is a monumental upgrade to the traditional Siri voice we've been used to. Not only will it be able to carry out simple requests like the original Siri, but Apple promises its upgraded version is far smarter, and will be much more responsive to your needs.
Siri AI has a new design which, as we expected, extends from the Dynamic Island where you can speak or even spark a typed conversation. Then there's Siri's iconic voice and tone, which is also getting a revamp.
Apple says Siri AI's new voice will be more conversational, detailed, and engaging, making your back-and-forth chats easy to navigate. Siri AI can understand slang and other colloquial terms, which it incorporates into its responses, but that's not the most impressive part — it's even more customizable.
Until now, Siri's options have spanned different accents from two distinct voices, male and female, but with Siri AI you can be even more precise with how you want it to sound by amending its speaking pace levels, and how expressive it is, ensuring you can create a voice assistant that you don't find jarring.
For the first time, Siri is getting a dedicated app which, as per Apple's keynote visuals, doesn't look too dissimilar to Chat GPT's, with your chat history integrated across all of your Apple devices, which is synced privately with iCloud. If you don't want to open Siri via its new Dynamic Island home, the Siri AI app allows you to kick-start conversations right there.
On top of all this, you can write and edit with Siri AI wherever you type on your device, be that in Messages, Mail, or Pages, and it even proof-reads your writing while you type, offering helpful tips and suggestions for improvement. This means you won't need to manually take action whenever a writing error is highlighted. Apple has also said this function will also be available across selected third-party apps.
This is a breaking news story. We'll be updating this article as we learn more.
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