Siri AI is going to be great for Apple — if it works. Sound familiar?

“Apple may have just explained how Siri is actually going to become useful,” is a headline Sherwood News wrote almost exactly two years ago when the company first announced AI Siri at its annual developer conference in 2024.

Two WWDCs later, and it’s very tempting to write that again.

Today Apple announced widely expected advancements to Siri — now called Siri AI and built on Google’s AI models — that enable at least some of Apple’s 2.5 billion-device user base to access AI across their device features and apps. (Apple said Apple Intelligence and Siri AI would be available on iPhone 15 Pro models and all models from iPhone 16 on, as well as iPads and Macs with M1 or later, and newer Apple Watch models.)

Those upgrades include things like getting writing help anywhere you put text or pulling your flight confirmation number from an email while you’re on the phone with customer service. The revamped Siri is also highly conversational and context-aware, drawing on personal data like your real-time location and adapting to individual apps. You make a photo album simply by describing it and edit the photo the same way. You can also make it create custom extensions for websites so that they’re more useful to you. It can access info on your screen and you can ask questions against it.

Apple’s gambit to get back in the AI game (or just to catch up) included the choice to rely upon “a deep collaboration with Google” to use the company's Gemini family of models, alongside Apple's own foundation models to power the new features they showed today. In a move that builds on its earlier privacy promises to users, Apple stressed that some of the new Apple Intelligence features run with data processed on-device, and others on servers using Apple’s complex “Private Cloud Compute” system.

Apple also showed off new child accounts and controls for parents, which use age-appropriate recommendations, based on experts’ guidance. New features include detecting and blocking nudity, gore, and violence in Messages and FaceTime calls for child account users.

In a smart but long overdue move, Apple also launched Siri AI as a standalone app, a move that’s mindful of how many people have been using genAI with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

For some of the AI features Apple executives showed off — such as image generation — there are usage limits. But don’t worry: Apple will be happy to take more of your money. In the keynote video, Apple executive Craig Federighi said, “Increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans.”

Ahead of the event, Wedbush's Dan Ives said he believed Apple could monetize its AI Services and storage features to the tune of $15 billion a year in additional services revenue (Apple’s services revenue was $109 billion last year).

The changes announced today seem like a huge and necessary leap in how to operate your iPhone and other devices. But we’ve been burned before. For it to matter, it will have to actually work.

Apple is widely rolling out the features when iOS 27 debuts in the fall. But Europeans will have to wait longer. In a press release, Apple blamed the delay on the EU’s Digital Markets Act: “Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants.”

The stakes are also higher this time around. Apple’s competitors, like Google, have already been doing it. Apple is more popular, but the tech has to be operational for that to matter.

The stock was mostly static during the keynote, but investors ultimately appear underwhelmed: Toward the end of the presentation, the stock turned negative for the day. It was recently down about 1%.