Apple opened WWDC 2026 in Cupertino on Monday with its biggest AI reset yet: a rebuilt Siri powered by a custom Google Gemini model. The new assistant gets a dedicated app and a chatbot-style chat mode, can see what is on your screen, understands personal context such as your emails, photos and files, and can carry out multi-step actions inside and across apps.
The headline of the deal is who is behind it. Apple will reportedly pay Google roughly $1 billion per year for a custom, roughly 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model that runs Siri's cloud features, while Apple's own models continue to handle on-device tasks. The arrangement is a notable shift for a company that has long marketed on-device, privacy-first processing.
Apple also aligned all of its platforms on version 27 — iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, tvOS 27 and visionOS 27 — with public releases expected in mid-September. iOS 27 adds on-device generative photo tools (Extend, Enhance and Reframe) and a reworked Camera interface.