Apple bets its AI turnaround on a Gemini-powered Siri at WWDC 2026
On the eve of what is expected to be Tim Cook's final keynote, Apple is set to unveil a rebuilt Siri running on Google Gemini, a standalone chatbot app, agentic cross-app tasks, and App Store hooks for third-party agents.
When Tim Cook walks on stage Monday at 10 a.m. PT, Apple is expected to do something it has avoided for fifteen years: hand the keys to its most personal product to a rival. According to Newsweek and Bloomberg, the rebuilt Siri debuting at WWDC 2026 will run on a custom model built with Google’s Gemini team, the fruit of a partnership announced in January that finally unblocks two years of stalled work on Apple Intelligence.
The optics are heavy. This is widely reported as Cook’s final keynote, with SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus set to take over as CEO on September 1. The succession is being staged against a backdrop of admitted failure: at WWDC 2024, Apple unveiled a contextual, cross-app Siri that never shipped, and at WWDC 2025 Craig Federighi conceded the work “needed more time to reach our high-quality bar.”
Monday’s announcements, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, are the cleanup. A standalone Siri app with a dark interface popping out of the Dynamic Island. Conversational history, file and image uploads, hooks into third-party chatbots. In iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, users will reportedly be able to set ChatGPT or Gemini as the default model behind Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools and Image Playground. The Information reports an App Store integration that lets AI agents handle multi-step jobs: booking reservations, editing documents, controlling smart-home devices. Gizmodo flags a Visual Intelligence mode inside the Camera app, riffing on Google Image Search.
The hardware tells its own story. Gurman reports that updated Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini units, both with improved chips for AI workloads, are “ready to go and just waiting on the new Siri.” A refreshed Apple TV remote is also expected. Developer betas drop the day of the keynote, public betas in July, full releases in September.
The deeper read is that Apple is doing what it almost never does on stage: admitting the model layer isn’t a place it can win alone, and routing around its own pride to ship. Cook’s last act is outsourcing the brain of the next decade’s interface to Mountain View. Ternus inherits the bill.
Sources
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