It’s been over a year since Apple Intelligence arrived, and now we’ve gone nearly a year without any major enhancements. But according to a new report, 2025 2026 will be the year of Apple Intelligence!
Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter doesn’t break any major news on the AI front, but it does have some interesting tidbits about Apple’s roadmap for the next year. It all starts in the spring, with the OS 26.4 updates. When iOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, tvOS 26.4, and so on hit our devices sometime around March, we should finally get the new Siri we were promised at the last WWDC. Wait, I mean, the one before that.
This will bring three concrete features promised at WWDC in 2024: screen awareness (Siri can see what’s on your screen and act accordingly), personal context (Siri builds a graph of knowledge about you, on-device, and uses it to personalize its answers and actions), and the ability to take actions in and across apps.
More than just new features, the very core of Siri is being updated to use a modern and sophisticated LLM model, which should give it better understanding of what users are saying to it and more natural responses, in addition to tapping into a wealth of world knowledge.
Apple has reportedly been working with several external companies on the possibility of using a modified, bespoke version of their LLMs as the foundation for the new Siri, testing them against its internally-developed LLM in a “bake off” of sorts. In this latest newsletter, Gurman says the new Siri will “lean on Google’s Gemini model” it it sounds like Gemini—or some Apple-specific variant of it—will serve as the underpinning for Siri.
You shouldn’t expect talking to Siri to be the same as talking to Google’s Gemini, though. Not only will the base model surely be modified in significant ways, but Siri will have access to entirely different sets of data.
The new Siri is reportedly coming in iOS 26.4.
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Smart home and OS 27
The March-April timeframe is also when Gurman says Apple will kick off its big smart home strategy. The first release will be a new smart display with both speaker-base and wall-mounted versions, and of course the new Siri will be a major draw to the new device. Over time Apple is expected to introduce more smart home offerings like cameras, a more sophisticated smart display on a robotic arm, and maybe even a doorbell or smart lock. Apple has big smart home plans, and they all require a huge improvement to Siri and Apple Intelligence to get off the ground.
In June at WWDC, Apple will unveil the OS 27 generation: iOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, watchOS 27, etc. These are expected to again feature “major updates to Apple Intelligence,” according to Gurman. Of course they are. Every tech company is all-in on AI now, no matter the cost.
While the specific improvements to Apple Intelligence for the OS 27 releases aren’t detailed, we can of course expect Apple to double down on Siri and expand capabilities related to the smart home, including AI vision recognition features that allow devices to recognize users and what they’re doing while protecting your privacy—these sorts of AI-powered features will be critical to future products like smart home cameras and smart glasses.
Of course, we’ve been here before. Gurman’s sources are no doubt accurate, but Apple has shown willingness to delay AI features when they’re not deemed good enough, and some of the features they have released (like Image Playground) leave much to be desired. We’re looking at a big year for Apple Intelligence in 2026 if Apple stays on plan and if the results are good and if consumers are happy with the changes, and if it can start to reverse years of brand damage to the Siri name. That’s a lot of “ifs.”
