Two years and a $250 million lawsuit later, Apple’s AI Siri revamp is finally arriving on iPhones, Macs, and even the Apple Vision Pro. At Monday’s WWDC keynote, the company detailed long-awaited updates powered by “Apple Intelligence,” positioning Siri as an always-on, context-aware assistant that can search across your texts, notes, and calendar to find information you forgot you had.
The vision is seductive. In one demo, Apple Senior Director Justin Titi asked Siri to remind him of a dessert his daughter mentioned in a text from a month ago. Siri found it: coconut cookies. It’s a small thing, but anyone who has scrolled through weeks of iMessage history knows the appeal of skipping that chore.
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The promise of a ‘second brain’
The new Siri uses what Apple calls “personal context”—data from native apps like iMessage, Notes, Calendar, Mail, and Photos. It can also see what’s on your screen. If you scroll past a photo of a park on Instagram, you can ask Siri where it is. (Whether third-party apps will integrate remains up to developers.)
This feels like the AI assistant I’ve wanted: an Emily from The Devil Wears Prada—a second brain that anticipates needs. I want Siri to auto-create a calendar event when a friend texts about dinner Thursday. I want it to remind me, as I walk past CVS, that I have a prescription waiting. I want it to nudge me when I forget to reply to an important work email.
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Apps like Poppy and Poke already try to offer this kind of agentic AI. But the paradox is unavoidable: these tools require vast amounts of personal data to function, raising the same privacy concerns that have dogged every AI assistant.
Privacy: Apple’s differentiator
Apple is leaning hard into privacy as a selling point. On-device AI handles simpler tasks like email summaries and AI emojis. For more complex requests, Apple introduced Private Cloud Compute (PCC), which processes data in the cloud without exposing it to Apple itself. The company offers a $1 million bug bounty for anyone who cracks PCC; so far, no one has.
That’s a stronger privacy stance than Google’s controversial Search overhaul, which faced criticism for blurring the line between organic results and AI-generated answers. Apple also allows users to toggle Siri AI on and off—a choice that Google’s Search AI doesn’t offer.
The risk of outsourcing too much
Still, I wonder: do I want to become the kind of person who can’t function without a friendly robot voice in my phone? In a recent conversation, writer Calvin Kasulke—author of a novel set entirely on Slack—challenged that desire. “Is all that you have necessary? If it is necessary, isn’t it worth cultivating the skill and spending the time to do it?” he asked. “I don’t think that those are skills that one should allow to atrophy.”
He’s right. Maybe instead of asking Siri to remind me about a TV show a friend recommended, I should pay more attention when I’m talking to them. The commercials that ask, “What if the computer bought your kid’s birthday gift?” miss the point: “What if you learned what your kid likes?”
When I say I want Siri to be Emily from The Devil Wears Prada, I should remember that Emily was on the verge of a breakdown. I can’t psychologically damage Siri the way Miranda Priestly damaged Emily, but I might damage my own ability to remember, to pay attention, to be present.
Apple’s new Siri is a powerful tool, but it’s also a test. For now, the toggle is there. I’ll have to decide if the forbidden fruit is worth tasting.
