Apple is preparing to announce a significant overhaul of Siri at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), with the iPhone maker expected to introduce an agentic operating system in which the voice assistant operates as an always-on companion across the entire iOS platform.
The move comes after Apple faced a lawsuit over AI features promised but not delivered, putting chief executive Tim Cook under pressure to demonstrate meaningful progress when he takes to the stage at the event.
The planned system stops short of turning the iPhone into a chatbot, but is designed to allow Siri to work across multiple apps simultaneously, completing tasks on behalf of users rather than simply responding to individual queries.
Central to the strategy is a deepened partnership with Google, which will allow Apple to offer more sophisticated AI capabilities without the cost and complexity of training its own large-scale language model from scratch.
Under the proposed architecture, a lightweight model running locally on the device will handle straightforward, privacy-sensitive tasks, while more demanding requests will be routed to Google's models running in a controlled data centre environment.
Apple is also expected to introduce simplified support for MCP, a protocol that allows AI models to connect with external tools and services, alongside so-called agentic intents that will let developers build experiences spanning multiple apps within a single workflow.
Analysts believe the announcements will mark a defining moment in what is already being described as the beginning of an "agent wars" era, in which technology companies compete to offer the most seamless and capable AI-driven experience on mobile devices.
There is, however, scepticism about the pace of delivery, with questions remaining over how much of the new system will be available when iOS ships in September and October.
Related reading
- Apple turns 50 next week. Wall Street wants to know what it does with the next decade
- Apple adds partners to American Manufacturing Program
- Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro mistaken for DeepSeek V4
The Google partnership also carries strategic risk for Apple, with concern that sharing architectural details with a rival could allow the search giant to fast-follow with a comparable experience on Android, potentially narrowing any first-mover advantage Apple hopes to secure.
WWDC has long served as Apple's most important platform for signalling its software direction to developers, and this year's event is expected to set the competitive tone for mobile AI for the next several years, with rivals watching closely for details of how deeply the new system is embedded across the operating system.
