Apple announced Siri AI, a from-the-ground-up rebuild of its assistant, at the WWDC keynote at Apple Park on Monday, and confirmed what two years of careful phrasing had been trying not to: the model underneath is Google’s Gemini. The multi-year collaboration, first announced in January, now lives at the center of a refreshed Apple Intelligence platform shipping with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, and visionOS 27.

Craig Federighi framed it as a values exercise. “AI is incredibly powerful technology,” he said, before pivoting to the privacy line Apple has been workshopping since the Gemini deal leaked: “We believe privacy in AI is non-negotiable.” On the cloud side, he promised “data is only used to execute your request, and outside experts can continue to verify this promise at any time.” He also took a swipe at competitors “racing forward” to develop “AI for the sake of AI” without regard for the humans using it, a difficult posture to hold while announcing that your flagship assistant runs on a rival’s frontier model.

The architecture is the tell. Apple Foundation Models on Cloud, with its top tier AFM Cloud Pro, runs on Nvidia GPUs inside Google’s cloud, and CNBC reported it’s described as similar in quality to Gemini Frontier. The most powerful on-device version of Siri AI requires at least 12GB of unified memory, which conveniently maps to iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and M3 and M4 Macs and iPads.

VP Mike Rockwell demoed Siri pulling directions to a landmark from an Instagram post. Variety highlighted a new camera Siri mode that reads a plate of food for nutritional info, or splits a bill with friends over Apple Cash. Useful, legible, and, per Apple, unavailable in Europe and China at launch because of regulatory challenges.

The market read it quickly. Shares opened up roughly 2% and turned negative just after 2 p.m. ET, around the time Tim Cook confirmed he’ll hand the company to hardware chief John Ternus in September. Daniel Newman of the Futurum Group offered the verdict the keynote had been engineered to avoid: “it’s ticking a box, but still uninspiring.” A founder-era CEO exits by outsourcing the intelligence layer to Mountain View and giving it a new name.

Sources