It’s been a year since Apple Inc. introduced the world to its artificial intelligence (AI) entrant at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
Developers and users are still waiting for more details on Apple Intelligence, which has sputtered, and they could come away disappointed next week at WWDC.
Monday’s keynote is expected to focus on design and productivity enhancements for iOS, including redesigned software interfaces for iPhone, iPad, Macintosh, Apple TV and Apple Watch. Software branding will get a makeover as well, from version numbers to year-based systems. Apple will introduce iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, macOS 26, and watchOS 26, according to a Bloomberg report.
What consumers and developers can expect on the AI front is Apple Intelligence will bring translation features to iOS, iPadOS and macOS — notably in automatically translating messages and live translations to phone calls. Apple is also reportedly moving toward live conversation translation, regardless of language, via AirPods.
Developers, meanwhile, should gain more access to Apple Intelligence tools — much like they do for Genmoji, an AI-powered feature in iOS 18 that creates customized emojis by describing them, and Writing Tools, to proofread, rewrite or reformat notes, emails, messages, documents and other text.
Such enhancements are minor, given the breakneck speed at which Apple’s competitors are moving. While Alphabet Inc.’s Google last month introduced more powerful AI models and improved AI search features, OpenAI in May said it had acquired io, the startup of former Apple chief designer Jony Ive for $6.4 billion to build AI hardware.
What Apple has announced around Apple Intelligence has been discouraging.
In March, the company said it was delaying a major improvement to its Siri voice assistant that would integrate it with iPhone apps so it could perform tasks such as finding details within emails and make restaurant reservations. It also recently removed the Siri and robotics teams from the auspices of its artificial intelligence head.
Compounding matters, the first Apple Intelligence tools launched in October — for rewriting text and generating slideshow movies out of user photos — underwhelmed the development community. A key feature that debuted in December, which summarized text messages, was disabled for news and media apps after the BBC discovered it twisted headlines to display factually incorrect information.
Still, tech analysts and experts descending on Apple’s campus on Monday for WWDC are holding out hope.
“While many on the Street are heading into WWDC [underwhelmed] given the slower-than-expected rollout of Apple Intelligence, we disagree with this bearish narrative and strongly believe this will be the start of AI monetization period of the Apple ecosystem as the company will continue [to] lay the foundation through its new operating system updates across mac, iOS, iPad, and others with its ’26’ update,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors on Friday.
