Apple launched a version of Siri powered by artificial intelligence in its biggest update to the tech assistant, while also unveiling enhanced child safety features for its products.
Siri AI is a "profoundly more capable and conversational assistant with personal context understanding, broad world knowledge and onscreen awareness", Apple said on Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California.
The assistant can help users by answering questions using the internet and finding information from personal messages, emails and photos. For example, users can ask Siri to find a restaurant recommendation a friend messaged them about, retrieve a hotel confirmation number from an old email, or pull up images with friends and family from a recent trip.
Siri AI is available for developer testing across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27 and will come later for the watchOS 27 beta. It will be available as a beta later this year for users with a supported device set to English, with Apple to expand support for more languages, the company added.
But Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU in iOS and iPadOS, and the digital assistant and the other new Apple Intelligence features will not be available in China as Apple works through regulatory requirements.
Siri AI is a "dramatically more capable and conversational assistant designed to help users find information and get things done throughout the day", said Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple.
Parental control
Apple on Monday also unveiled features to help parents create safe digital experiences for children, as well as improvements to boost the software design and performance of its products. The child-safety features allow parents to more easily manage the content their children can see, who they can communicate with and when they have access to apps, Apple said.
The company has also announced tools that aim to make it easy to set daily total time allowances across entertainment, games and social media apps for children. Schedules let parents manage which apps their children have access to at different points in the day. Apple Screen Time has been redesigned to be more intuitive for parents.
A child account is required for users under 13 and is available for those up to the age of 18.
The features will be made available with software updates this autumn.
The next generation of Apple Intelligence will soon have additional editing capabilities for photos, tools that can "transform the way users browse the web" in Safari and new features in Image Playground. Other improvements include a faster launch time for iPhone and iPad apps, as well as photos, with AirDrop transfers also set be quicker.
Changes to the software design include a new slider in settings to personalise Liquid Glass, while app icons have been updated.
Foldable iPhone
Looking ahead, Apple is expected to launch a foldable iPhone, which is said to take on a wider form factor that, when opened, resembles the shape of an iPad – or a passport, as some suggest.
It is, however, unclear whether the launch will come at the traditional September special event, or later this year.
