Apple’s new Siri AI is more than just a smarter assistant — it's a new enterprise app layer

Apple’s new Siri AI, unveiled yesterday at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2026), may look like a consumer product story on the surface. But for enterprise developers and IT leaders, the bigger news from WWDC26 is that Apple is turning Siri into a systemwide AI interface for apps, data and workplace actions across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro, as revealed in the WWDC26 Apple Intelligence developer guide . In other words, if your company offers an application on Apple devices, whether it's served on iOS mobile device or Mac, the new Siri AI may force you to change how that application is discovered, served, and its contents and workflows made available to end users. Enterprise developers can expose app content through App Entities, make it available to Apple’s Spotlight semantic index, define actions through App Intents and App Schemas, and map onscreen user interface elements to app objects through View Annotations. That makes Siri AI much more than a voice assistant. Apple is positioning it as an AI-powered app action and content-discovery layer built into its operating systems. Siri becomes an app action layer For enterprise developers, the shift could be significant. A business app that properly adopts Apple’s new frameworks could let users ask Siri to find, summarize, update or act on app content without the developer having to build a separate chatbot interface. Apple says App Intents , its existing framework for exposing app actions to system features like Siri and Shortcuts, is the path for connecting apps to Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, while schemas make app content and actions usable through natural language. In practical terms, that could apply to customer records in a CRM, open tickets in an IT service desk, project tasks, invoices, calendar events, documents, expenses, notes, messages or field-service records. Instead of opening an app, searching manually and clicking through menus, an employee could ask Siri to act on the specific object they are viewing or retrieve a related item from another app. Spotlight becomes the enterprise search hook Apple says in its WWDC26 Apple Intelligence guide that entity schemas contribute app content to the Spotlight semantic index, while intent schemas let users take action on that indexed content without developers defining a rigid list of command phrases. Apple also says the new View Annotations API lets developers map views to entities so users can refer to what is onscreen conversationally — for example, “summarize this customer thread,” “add this invoice to my expenses,” or “follow up on this task tomorrow.” That is an important distinction from earlier voice-assistant integrations, which often required narrow command structures and explicit invocation phrases. Apple is instead giving developers a way to describe an app’s data and capabilities so Siri, Spotlight and Shortcuts can use them through the system. Developers get testing tools for Siri and app actions Apple is also adding AppIntentsTesting , a framework that validates App Intents through the same infrastructure used by Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight without requiring UI automation. That matters for enterprise software teams because natural-language app actions need to be testable, repeatable and reliable before they are trusted in production workflows. It also gives developers a path to include Siri and Spotlight behavior in ordinary testing pipelines instead of treating assistant integration as a manual demo feature. The result is a clearer developer mandate: if an app wants to show up well inside Siri AI, it will likely need to expose its data, actions and onscreen context through Apple’s system frameworks. For enterprise SaaS vendors, that could become an important part of Apple-platform competitiveness, especially in categories such as productivity, collaboration, CRM, project management, finance, design, knowledge management, healthcare, logistics and field operations. Apple expands its model stack for developers Apple is also using WWDC26 to expand its AI developer stack beyond Siri. The updated Foundation Models framework gives Swift developers access to Apple’s on-device models , Apple models running through Private Cloud Compute and third-party model providers that conform to Apple’s Language Model protocol. That gives developers more flexibility than a single Apple-only model path. Apple says in its Apple Intelligence developer guide that the framework now supports multimodal prompts, Vision tools, dynamic model profiles and evaluations. In theory, an enterprise app could use an Apple on-device model for private or lightweight tasks, call Apple’s Private Cloud Compute for heavier reasoning, or plug in an outside provider such as Claude, Gemini, an open-source model or a company-controlled model through Apple’s model-provider interface. Core AI brings custom models onto Apple silicon Apple is also introducing Core AI , an operating system-level framework for running developers’ own models on Apple silicon. For enterprises that do not want sensitive data sent to a cloud model at all, local inference remains one of Apple’s most important advantages. Core AI gives developers a first-party way to deploy custom models with Swift APIs, memory controls and optimized execution on Apple hardware. Evaluations signal a more mature enterprise AI posture The company’s new Evaluations framework also points at a more mature enterprise AI posture. AI features are difficult to test with conventional unit tests because model outputs can vary. Apple says the framework helps developers define metrics, automatically grade outputs and aggregate statistics. For enterprise buyers, that matters because AI features need measurable reliability, not just impressive demos. Apple is also explicitly addressing the security risks of app agents. WWDC26 developer materials include a session on how developers can mitigate risks to agentic features , covering indirect prompt injection, data exfiltration, unintended actions, threat modeling, user confirmations, authentication and safeguards for App Intents and Foundation Models. That is a notable acknowledgement that AI assistants able to read context and take action across apps create new attack surfaces. Enterprise IT gets new Apple Intelligence controls For enterprise IT, Apple also answered some of the governance questions raised by Siri AI’s initial announcement. Its WWDC26 device management documentation describes new management controls for Apple Intelligence, Siri and external intelligence integrations. Supervised devices can use Apple’s intelligence settings configuration to allow or deny features such as Genmoji, Image Playground, Writing Tools, Image Wand, app-specific intelligence in Mail, Notes and Safari, Apple Intelligence Report, Visual Intelligence Summary and on-device-only processing for dictation and translation. Apple says additional management for Siri AI and Visual Intelligence will arrive in later beta releases. That means enterprise controls are not complete yet, but Apple is clearly building Siri AI into its managed-device architecture rather than treating it as an unmanaged consumer feature. Apple also adds controls for outside AI services Apple is also adding controls for external intelligence services. Its deployment docs describe a configuration for managing external intelligence integrations, including whether users can access outside AI services and whether they can sign in to those services. That will matter for organizations trying to control when employees use Apple’s own models, Apple’s private cloud architecture or third-party AI systems. Those controls could help Apple compete with Microsoft and Google in enterprise AI, but with a different pitch. Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini are tied deeply to their respective productivity clouds. Apple’s strategy is more device- and OS-centered: make AI available where the user already works, expose app actions through system frameworks and emphasize on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute as privacy advantages. Apple’s privacy pitch remains central Apple’s privacy architecture remains central to that pitch. Siri AI uses Apple Foundation Models on device and through Private Cloud Compute. Apple says in its Siri AI announcement that requests handled by Private Cloud Compute do not store personal data or make it accessible to Apple. For industries such as healthcare, financial services, legal, education and government, that claim may be more important than any single assistant feature. But enterprises will still need more detail before treating Siri AI as a fully governed workplace assistant. Apple’s WWDC26 materials show progress on management controls, external AI restrictions and app-level governance, but the full picture is still emerging. Key questions remain around auditability, retention, work-versus-personal data boundaries, role-based access, compliance certifications, and how much control IT departments will have over Siri’s ability to act inside specific business apps. Availability limits could complicate rollout Availability also complicates enterprise rollout. Siri AI is in developer testing now for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 and visionOS 27, with watchOS support coming in a later beta. Apple says the user-facing beta arrives later this year. The feature requires Apple Intelligence-capable hardware, which means many older corporate devices will not support it. Apple also says Siri AI will not initially be available on iPhone and iPad in the European Union, and that Siri AI and other new Apple Intelligence features are not available in China while the company works through regulatory requirements. That means global enterprises may face fragmented deployment, with different feature availability by hardware, operating system, language and region. App Store changes give business software vendors another opening Apple also introduced enterprise-adjacent App Store changes that could matter for business software vendors. StoreKit 2 will support subscriptions for groups and organizations, including volume purchasing through Apple Business and Apple School Manager. IT teams will be able to buy and assign App Store subscriptions through device management workflows, while developers will be able to manage subscription availability for organizations. That gives Apple a more business-friendly path for selling app subscriptions into managed environments. The company is also unifying Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials and Apple Business Connect under Apple Business , which Apple describes as a broader platform for Managed Apple Accounts, device management, volume licensing, Admin APIs, Apple Maps locations, Tap to Pay on iPhone, Branded Mail and multi-seat subscriptions. Apple’s enterprise AI strategy comes into focus Taken together, the WWDC26 enterprise story is bigger than Siri alone. Apple is building an AI stack that spans user-facing assistant features, developer integration frameworks, local and private-cloud model infrastructure, AI testing, App Store business subscriptions and device-management controls. The strategic question is whether Apple can make this more than another Siri reset. Developers will need to adopt Apple’s app-intelligence frameworks. Enterprises will need stronger governance assurances. Users will need the assistant to work reliably across real workflows, not just Apple’s own apps. But the direction is now much clearer. Apple is not trying to compete in enterprise AI by launching a standalone chatbot. It is embedding AI into the operating system, making apps addressable through Siri and Spotlight, giving developers model and testing tools, and giving IT teams at least the beginnings of policy controls. For enterprise developers, that means App Intents, App Schemas, App Entities, Spotlight indexing and View Annotations may become core parts of building competitive Apple-platform apps. For enterprise technology leaders, it means Apple’s devices could soon include a native AI assistant that can act across business workflows — if Apple can prove that the privacy, security and management model is strong enough for production use.