en.Wedoany.com Reported - Apple officially launched Siri AI at WWDC 2026, allowing users to adjust the voice assistant's tone, speech rate, and expressiveness via dedicated sliders. This release comes two years after the initial launch of Apple Intelligence in 2024, during which Apple settled a $250 million legal dispute.

Mike Rockwell, Vice President of Engineering, demonstrated the new Siri at the event: it can search users' emails, photos, and messages, and answer questions based on their digital life context. The core of this update lies in the slider feature, enabling users to adjust Siri's expressiveness and speech rate for the first time. Digital Trends noted that such personalization has no equivalent among competing voice assistants, including Gemini and Alexa.

Voice settings are controlled via two independent sliders: one for speech pace and the other for expressiveness level. This mechanism is designed to adapt Siri to different usage scenarios, whether fast and objective or more conversational. Additionally, Siri AI features contextual awareness, allowing it to retrieve users' iCloud data, photos, messages, notes, and emails to answer questions without opening apps. A demo showed that users could find a photo and share it in a group chat with a single request. Initial tests on iOS 27 Developer Beta 3 indicate the feature is generally reliable, though some errors persist in early development stages.

The new Siri is based on a partnership between Apple and Google, which integrates Gemini into the Apple Intelligence architecture. Craig Federighi described this collaboration as a "deep collaboration" and a co-developed model. Apple maintains control over local data processing and user experience through Private Cloud Compute, but its independence in artificial intelligence technology remains limited.

Siri AI is scheduled to launch alongside the iPhone 18 in late 2026, but with significant limitations. The feature will not be available in the European Union or China at launch, with EU deployment affected by regulatory disputes over the Digital Markets Act. In terms of hardware, it requires an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 and later models. The most advanced features, including voice personalization and improved dictation, are exclusive to the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro. This hardware fragmentation indicates that Siri's deep overhaul is not intended for all users.