Apple Intelligence gets a second shot with help from Google and Nvidia

At WWDC 2026, Apple showed off a rebuilt version of Siri. The assistant runs on foundation models developed with Google. For complex queries, it taps Nvidia GPUs.

Apple used this year's Worldwide Developers Conference to unveil the next generation of Apple Intelligence and a ground-up rework of Siri. Marketed as "Siri AI," the new assistant can execute system-wide actions, read on-screen content, and pull personal context from messages, emails, and photos, according to Apple. A dedicated Siri app syncs conversations across all devices via iCloud.

Apple developed its "Apple Foundation Models" in close collaboration with Google, building on Gemini technology. During a Tech Talk after the keynote, Craig Federighi clarified just how far the partnership actually goes: "The amount of the Google Assistant we use is none." Apple doesn't use the Gemini app, the models Google ships to its own customers, or Google Search as a knowledge base. For world knowledge, Apple relies on its own "World Knowledge Service," which the company says it built over several years.

The third generation of AFM consists of five models: The four smaller ones - AFM Core, AFM Core Advanced, AFM Cloud, and AFM Cloud Image - were trained entirely for Apple Silicon and only "refined using outputs from Gemini frontier models," said Apple's AI lead Amar Subramanya. Only the top-tier model, AFM Cloud Pro, actually runs on Nvidia GPUs inside Apple's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, which has been expanded into Google Cloud for that purpose. Subramanya told CNBC that AFM Cloud Pro is comparable in quality to Google's Gemini frontier models.

No benchmarks have been released yet. A "System Orchestrator" decides whether a query gets processed locally or in the cloud. Federighi called this router central to the system's privacy architecture.

The camera module gets a new Siri mode too. Users can point at a restaurant receipt to split the bill with Apple Cash or aim at a plate to get nutritional info. Visual Intelligence is also coming to visionOS.

Apple Intelligence will also be able to change compromised passwords automatically. The agent navigates through the relevant website, logs in, and saves the new password in the Passwords app. Apple hasn't said how reliably this works in practice.

Other app integrations include Safari with "Notify Me" and tab organization, a new Image Playground app, Spatial Reframing in Photos, AI video descriptions for HomeKit Secure Video clips, and summarized notifications in the Home app. For developers, Apple is opening up the Foundation Models Framework, which now supports image inputs, custom skills, and server-side model execution. Xcode gets an expanded coding assistant for agentic workflows.