Apple’s New Siri Is Bigger Than the Announcement on Stage

Photo: David Talukdar/ZUMA Press Wire, Reuters Apple’s new Siri has been unveiled, and the surprising story is behind the scenes Noam Cohen 7 minutes ago 0 0 Apple’s new Siri promises to evolve from a limited voice assistant into a smart personal assistant that understands context, the screen and complex tasks, but behind Apple’s announcement lies a bigger story, its reliance on Nvidia and Google technologies, and the realization that in the age of artificial intelligence, user adoption matters just as much as the model itself

I have been an Apple fan for years. I bought my first iPhone at a time when people still needed to be explained what a smartphone was. Since then, almost every new device the company has released has found its way into my home almost automatically. So when Apple unveiled the new generation of Siri at its annual developers conference, I was genuinely excited. The new Siri, as presented at WWCD 2026 | screenshot, is not just a cosmetic upgrade, but a rebuild of the personal assistant from the ground up. It understands what appears on the screen, identifies what is in front of the user using the camera, can read context from messages and emails, and is capable of performing complex tasks involving several steps within a single request. For more than a decade, Siri was for many people a kind of joke, a voice assistant we stopped using. Now, at least according to the demonstrations, it finally looks like a real personal assistant.

As someone who works every day on implementing artificial intelligence in organizations and businesses, this story is especially intriguing to me. The biggest challenge for AI today is no longer technological capability, but adoption. Even though the tools exist and are sometimes even available for free, most people still do not integrate smart assistants into their daily routines. The next generation of Apple Intelligence powers an entirely new Siri: making the apps and experiences you rely on across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro more personal and helpful than ever. pic.twitter.com/aXiDIkqAKn, Tim Cook (@tim_cook), June 8, 2026

The new Siri is trying to solve exactly that problem, not through another app that has to be remembered and opened, but through the device already in our hands. If this really works, it may be the first smart assistant that succeeds in bringing artificial intelligence into the everyday routine of the average user. But what caught my attention more than anything was not any of these new capabilities, but what is hidden under the hood. Although Apple built the new Siri on models it developed itself, it also relied along the way on one of its biggest rivals. The company used Google’s Gemini model to train and develop its new models, and even purchased a license for technology based on Gemini for some of the most complex tasks. In addition, some of these capabilities run on Google cloud infrastructure and on Nvidia chips. In other words, the company that built its brand around the idea of, "we do everything ourselves," had to rely, at least part of the way, on its competitors to build Siri’s next generation.

To be fair, Apple stresses that Siri’s day-to-day use is based on the models it developed itself, without direct use of Google’s models. I do not see this as a scandal, but rather the opposite. In my view, this is one of the most mature messages Apple has delivered in recent years. The model layer has become a commodity, a race that does not necessarily need to be won alone. Apple’s real value is not necessarily in creating the smartest AI model, but in its ability to package the technology better than anyone else, inside the devices already in users’ pockets, while preserving privacy and ease of use. This is, in effect, the ultimate ecosystem for the AI era.

But before getting too excited, it is also worth staying grounded, especially here in Israel. First, for now this is mainly demonstrations and promises. We have already seen autonomous assistants in the past that promised a lot and did not always meet expectations. Apple’s new feature will not reach millions of users, that is the reason 1 09.06.26 | C14 desk. Second, there are major availability gaps. The initial launch is intended for the United States and English only. In the European Union, at least at the first stage, some capabilities will not be available on iPhone and iPad devices. Support for Hebrew has not been announced at all, and there is still no timetable for it. In addition, the most advanced version, the one that runs mainly on the device itself, will require the newest iPhone models with 12GB of memory and above. Users with older devices will still get access to some of the new capabilities, but will rely more on cloud processing and less on the device itself. Tim Cook’s last speech as Apple CEO, "The best is yet to come" 0 09.06.26 | Eliyahu Amar

So for the Israeli user, at least in the coming months, this is mainly a matter of "watch and wait" rather than "start using now." And yet, this time the wait may be worth it. So yes, I am still a big Apple fan. But precisely from that place, it is important to say the truth. The new Siri is not impressive because Apple built the smartest AI model in the world. It is impressive because Apple understood that adoption matters more than technical specifications. It understood that sometimes it is right, and even smart, to rely on competitors in order to build the best product for the user. That, in my view, is the most important insight from this event, and it matters far beyond Siri itself. Noam Cohen is the founder of Critiqe IL, an AI consulting and implementation company for organizations in Israel. AI Gemini iPad iPhone Nvidia Apple artificial intelligence Google Tim Cook Siri 0 Write a comment