Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Apple
WWDC 2026: What to expect from Siri AI, Apple’s long-awaited update to its personal assistant
Tech Expert Mike Yawney sits down for an exclusive interview with Apple's Greg 'Joz' Joswiak about the tech giant's latest product ...
About Greg Joswiak
At the 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference, Greg Joswiak discussed Apple's introduction of Siri AI, a set of features built on the company's existing Apple Intelligence platform. Joswiak stated that Apple had been working on artificial intelligence for years and described the development of AI as a major technological shift comparable to the personal computer, the internet, and the iPhone. He said that Apple's approach is to "build products for people" rather than "doing AI for AI's sake." Regarding features that were delayed from a previous announcement, Joswiak said the company chose not to ship a solution that "wasn't great" and instead moved the development to a new architecture, which he described as a decision he would make again. Joswiak also addressed the delayed availability of Siri AI on iPhone and iPad in the European Union, calling the situation "heartbreaking to us" and stating that Apple had tried to provide solutions to the European Commission. He expressed a hope that other governments would not follow what he called the "failed European experiment" with the Digital Markets Act. In other remarks, Joswiak discussed new parental controls and photo editing features, including "spatial reframing," and noted that Apple is working with organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatricians on guidance for those controls.
Transcript (31 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
M
Mike0:06
Well, John, it's so great to sit down with you once again. Nice seeing you.
G
Greg Joswiak0:09
Thanks, Mike.
M
Mike0:09
Congratulations on the big announcements.
Before we start, I do have to say a special hello to somebody back in Canada and Toronto.
G
Greg Joswiak0:18
Jeff and Carolyn?
M
Mike0:19
Jeff and Carolyn. When they heard us talking to you, they said, "Make sure you pass on a big hello." So, hello to them.
G
Greg Joswiak0:26
Well, hello back to those guys because Jeff and Carolyn are my favorite hosts of any morning show in the world.
M
Mike0:32
There you go. I'll pass that along for sure. So, big announcements yesterday. And I got to say, obviously, AI kind of took the spotlight. Why is AI so important for Apple right now?
G
Greg Joswiak0:44
Well, you know, we look at major things that have happened in technology. Obviously, it was the personal computer. There was the internet. There was mobile that was driven by iPhone and the App Store. And this is that big. A lot of people, you heard Craig say in the keynote, "Doing AI for AI's sake." That's not what we do, right? We build products for people. And so, what we want to do with our solution is put you back in the center of it and the product experience around you. And we're trying to use AI to just really help you do the things that you want to do better, make our products better, the features better. I always love it when you're using AI and you don't even know that it was AI that helped you. So, we're trying to personalize this stuff and not make you have to feel like you have to become a prompt expert in order to get AI to help you. So, it's like, "No, it's just part of our products."
M
Mike1:35
Speaking of personalizing, one of the things I think a lot of people realized yesterday hearing the new Siri, Siri AI, for the first time. It's different. She's more conversational. Why was that important?
G
Greg Joswiak1:49
Well, you know, Siri was always designed to be your personal assistant, right? And for years, the way you communicated was only through speaking to it, right? A few years ago, we gave you also the ability to type to it as well. But the idea of it is like, look, you just want to speak to it naturally. Or type to it naturally. You don't want to have to again learn special ways to talk to it. And you want it to speak back to you in a way like an assistant would, right? In a way that also feels conversational. One of the things that I love is, you know, how many times you're talking to Siri and you're making a mistake in what you say. And before like, okay, let me start over. Now it's like, okay, I can change what I'm saying in the middle. It still understands me. It's just completely natural. It does change the experience. It just makes it a lot easier to use and more friendly.
M
Mike2:34
So I have a sneaky suspicion you've probably got to try it already.
G
Greg Joswiak2:37
Oh yeah, I've been using it for quite some time.
M
Mike2:39
So what for you really stands out? What's the first thing people are going to notice when they start using the new Siri AI?
G
Greg Joswiak2:44
Well, you will notice it. You will notice everything. It's just to me it's a lot of what we always wanted Siri to be. And what we're able to do with Apple intelligence is really enable it to be that. We talked about being more conversational. It's more powerful and capable. One of the things that I love the most and I was literally just using it a few minutes ago is it understands your personal context. So it understands your communication in a way that I just was trying to find out. Bob had sent me something earlier. Did he text it to me? Did he email it to me? I just asked Siri, it's like, "Hey, look up the information that Bob sent me about blah blah blah." There it came up. It was it. It was like, that's just magic, right? And it can tap into world knowledge, so it knows things that you would expect AI to know. And it just works in the apps. One of the things we're excited to bring out here at our developer conference is we want third-party apps to work with it as well, so that Siri knows how to talk to them. It's just incredibly cool. I've been in this business for a long time, you know that, Mike. And this stuff still excites me and I will tell you Siri AI has me very excited. I think our users, your viewers right now, are going to love using Siri AI.
M
Mike4:00
Now, you said that this is the Siri that you wanted it to be. So let's look back 2 years ago because a number of announcements were made here at WWDC, and they never came out. So, what would you say to those critics? Why did it take an extra 2 years? And what would you say to those that are saying, "Well, Apple's just catching up now?"
G
Greg Joswiak4:22
Yeah, and most features actually did. They just kind of, you know, we actually shipped almost everything that we showed at that developer conference in 2024. There were a handful of features, three features specifically, primarily the personal context around Siri, that we were on a path to do it in an old architecture of Siri, and as we were using it, it just wasn't right too often. Right? And people expect a great solution from Apple, and we said, "You know what? Rather than ship a solution that isn't great, we're going to put it in our new architecture, what we now call Siri AI, building on Apple intelligence, because we think we can deliver a lot better experience." So, that means rather than last March when people were expecting it, that we would be talking about it here, a little bit more than a year later. I'd make that decision again. It's a better experience for our customers. Very happy with the way it's working. I think people are going to love it. And in the end, people expect quality products from Apple. That's what we do.
M
Mike5:24
Obviously, AI was not the only thing that was talked about yesterday during the keynote, parental controls.
G
Greg Joswiak5:29
Yeah.
M
Mike5:30
Pretty big thing.
G
Greg Joswiak5:31
Very big, yeah.
M
Mike5:31
But let's talk about that because Apple addressed right off the bat that we know, everyone knows, that kids are seeing things that they necessarily shouldn't see.
G
Greg Joswiak5:39
Yeah, or spending too much time on devices. I think all of us as parents have had to be confronted with that, the digital health of our kids. We wanted to create a set of features that was easy to use. Parents shouldn't have to be IT experts to know how to set this stuff. So, we wanted to look at something that was very easy from an assistant that would help you set it up, giving you some guidance of what the experts in this area suggest as far as guidelines for usage, how much you should use, entertainment or social or games. Very easy to manage who your kids can talk to, so you don't have to worry about that, especially for the younger kids, when they can use the device, as well as how long. Very easy to use and again, I think it got a pretty good reception yesterday.
M
Mike6:27
Well, it's not just Apple making up these guidelines, they're coming from experts in the field.
G
Greg Joswiak6:32
Yeah, we're working with experts around the world. One of the ones we talked about that we work really closely with is the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is a big organization, world known. They spent a lot of time studying this. They've been a great partner in working with them. They were here yesterday at the event and they've been helping us with this guidance. And by the way, we will continue to evolve the guidance as the science and expertise in this area grow as well, but we want to impart what we know and what we've been told to parents as they're setting this up because it's hard for any of us to know. We don't all do the research, right? Well, there are people doing the research. We want to make that easy for you to find.
M
Mike7:09
I know we're almost out of time, but I have to ask, it might be a tough question for you. If you had to, you've had experience obviously with Siri AI and Apple Intelligence. If you were to pick one feature of everything that's going to be coming out this fall, what's the one that you're most excited about?
G
Greg Joswiak7:24
Well, I am excited about Siri AI, as you heard, but since we talked about that already, I look, I think the photo stuff is really cool. You know, we had photos clean up already. It was part of that original set of features that we talked about and delivered in Apple Intelligence. People have loved it. Well, the new photo clean up is way better. I mean, it's way way more capable, but also there's some other photo features. And I should maybe say that what we don't want to do is create fake photos. There's image generation you can do all that kind of stuff. We want to be respectful of the original photo. So, we did more features like, for example, if I'm taking a picture of you and I wish later I was maybe at a slightly different angle, I could actually do that now after the fact. And it's unbelievably cool. It's called spatial reframing, you know, or I could, let's say that I wish I would have maybe positioned you different in a photo. I can expand the photo scene. It's just really magical stuff that honors the original moment that that picture was taken, yet allows you to do some really cool things.
M
Mike8:19
Well, congratulations once again on the announcement. I think a lot of people are excited to get their hands on Siri AI in the fall.
G
Greg Joswiak8:25
Okay, well, tell Jonathan Carolina I said hello and next time I'll see him in person.
M
Mike8:28
Will do. Thank you.
G
Greg Joswiak8:29
Thanks, Mike.