Pretty much every AI model out there has its own app. Google has Gemini, Samsung has Bixby, OpenAI has ChatGPT, and Anthropic has Claude, just to name a few. So, when Apple decided to launch a standalone Siri app, it hardly came as a surprise. But what’s surprising is how back in 2025, Apple exec Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak basically shut down the idea of a Siri app. But now, it looks like they’ve changed their minds.
Craig Federighi explains reasoning behind Siri app
Back in 2025, Federighi and Joswiak spoke to Joanna Stern in an interview. Back then, both Apple execs explained that they wanted Apple Intelligence to be integrated throughout the operating system. Not as an app by the side. But fast forward to today, and it’s a very different story.
During a Q&A session post-WWDC 2026, Craig Federighi explained why Apple chose to launch a Siri app. Instead of thinking of the Siri app as a chatbot like you would with other AI apps, he framed it as a place for users to go back and reference past chats with Siri. “We see Siri not as a separate chatbot, just an unintegrated place you go and chit-chat, but rather as an integral, conversational tool that you use in the moment, deeply integrated into your experience.”
He added, “Now, we did go back and forth on what’s the best way, if you want to get back to such a chat that you had, because you want to continue it, you want to reference it, and quite honestly, in our platform, the most natural affordance for any user to go find something like that is to have an app that they can manage on their home screen, launch, and get back to. And so we have a Siri app, and that Siri app just re-embodies those capabilities of that core system experience.”
Apple Intelligence has been upgraded
In addition to launching a standalone Siri app, Apple has also overhauled the Apple Intelligence experience. From what we can tell in the demos, Apple has really done a lot of work since Apple Intelligence’s first launch two years ago.
Now, it looks like AI features are integrated tightly throughout Apple’s platforms. So, instead of launching a chatbot, users can launch Siri from anywhere and have it see and understand what’s on your screen. The demos Apple showed on stage were impressive. The company also made sure to use their actual phones during the demo.
This is a departure from a few years ago. Back then, Apple used computer graphics to simulate how Apple Intelligence would work. This gives us hope that the overhauled Apple Intelligence will deliver as promised.
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