At WWDC 2026, Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior VP of Software Engineering, announced a suite of new updates to Apple Intelligence. It powers Siri AI, Apple's revamped AI assistant, which is more conversational, more expressive, and now available in its own standalone app. Apple Intelligence also adds new features to apps like Photos, Messages, and Mail.Federighi announced that “Apple Foundation Models” would be at the heart of new Apple Intelligence tools. These models will run on private servers using cloud compute and will be powered by Google Gemini models.The new models will deliver visual intelligence capabilities, improved language understanding, and enhanced transcription. In many respects, these Apple Intelligence tools bring Apple in line with its competitors, Google and Samsung, whose devices already offer similar AI tools.
You May Also Like
Apple Foundation Models will be powered by Google Gemini models.
Federighi emphasized the importance of privacy to Apple Intelligence: "Privacy in AI is non-negotiable," he said. The new Apple Intelligence tools will use a combination of on-device processing and cloud compute, and Federighi said that users' conversations would not be used for AI training.
