The launch of Apple Intelligence-powered Siri was delayed by more than a year, mainly due to the challenges Apple faced in developing its own AI models. On the one hand, the company has a strict privacy policy, which limits the amount of data available to train models.
On the other hand, Apple did not initially show much willingness to invest heavily in this field. However, this delay had an unexpected upside.
This week, Apple and Google announced that Gemini models will run on Apple’s private cloud computing servers, with the aim of supporting future Apple Intelligence features, including the all-new version of Siri that was unveiled at WWDC24.
Although these advanced features rely on cloud processing, local models will remain an essential part of the experience. Upon the initial announcement, Apple Intelligence required an A17 Pro processor or later, which limited the feature to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max phones only.
Over time, the base of supporting devices has expanded significantly. All iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 series users, as well as iPhone 15 Pro owners, can benefit from Apple Intelligence. Thus, the number of supported iPhone models increased to 11 devices, after the number did not exceed only two devices at the initial launch.
This expansion represents an important shift, as Apple Intelligence has transformed from an exclusive marketing feature for the latest devices to a free software update that reaches a wide segment of iPhone users.
In conclusion, the technical details of the upcoming features are still not entirely clear, especially with the new Siri relying on a mix of local models and Gemini cloud services. However, Apple is expected to continue requiring support for local processing on the device to ensure new features work.
With the start of the introduction of the improved Siri in the iOS 26.4 update during the spring, and the launch of additional features with iOS 27, the picture appears more positive, especially with the expansion of the user base able to try these new technologies.
