Siri doesn’t need a ‘bright’ makeover. It needs to be less dim

The invitations for Apple’s next keynote have gone out, and, as always, we can start poring over the artwork and tagline looking for clues. What has Apple got in store for us? Something worthwhile, we hope, but the signs are a little worrying.

Earlier this week, Apple sent developers their invites for WWDC 2026, which begins on June 8. These feature the logo for Swift, Apple’s app programming language, in luminous colors on a black background, together with the customarily punning phrase “Coming bright up.”

As my colleague Jason Cross notes, these elements (along with the brightly glowing text in the original announcement email) are likely a hint at Siri’s widely anticipated interface overhaul, which is expected to include a glowing Dynamic Island during active use. And while that sounds pleasant enough, it’s worrying to think that even now, Apple may believe the problem with Siri is that it isn’t sufficiently eye-catching.

At the risk of repeating myself, Siri in its current form is an extremely poor voice assistant. It intrudes when it’s not wanted, turns a deaf ear when it is, mishears, disobeys, pronounces itself unable to perform simple commands, and generally lags behind the competition on both accuracy and range of features. It isn’t fit for purpose, and the most frustrating part is that it isn’t getting any better. Subjectively, in fact, it feels like Siri in 2026 is worse than at any time in its history.

Apple has been working on a new, improved version of Siri for years (we were told about a major overhaul at WWDC 2024, and work on the project will have long pre-dated that announcement), but this hugely important launch keeps getting delayed.

Go towards the light

It’s hard to understand why a company with such a wealth of resources could have fallen so far behind. Apple even got a head start in the race to build a functional chatbot/AI assistant, having acquired Siri five years before OpenAI even existed. The most plausible theory is that Apple has struggled to build an accurate LLM while maintaining its pro-privacy policies: AI, after all, needs user data to learn, and running a successful AI business calls for a, shall we say, flexible approach to data ethics.

Whichever path Apple chooses to get past this hindrance—the current approach seems to be buy-in models built by companies with less scrupulous privacy policies—which is an interesting way around the ethical side of things–it needs to act soon. The user experience with Siri is horrible, and the delay in its revamped version is getting ridiculous, not to mention costly.

Apple

But this is a targeted mission: a surgical strike, not a declaration of war. I don’t think the company needs to compete directly with rivals who’ve gone all-in on AI. It doesn’t, in my opinion, need to offer deep agentic AI or system-wise AI assistance. What it needs to do is fix Siri. For Apple, AI should be a means to an end, not a fancy demo to placate buzzword-crazed shareholders.

Is this what we can expect at WWDC next month? I don’t know. The optimist would point out that products that are repeatedly delayed are sometimes worth the wait. They would add that Apple’s invitation clues generally refer to only one aspect of the imminent event, and are sometimes so vague they don’t really refer to anything. Even if WWDC 2026 were slated to feature a 45-minute apology for Siri’s inaccuracies followed by a comprehensive demo of its new flawless performance, it’s unlikely the company would have taglined the event, “We’re so Siri.”

I’m trying very hard to be that optimist. Adequate or better Siri performance is the one thing I want from WWDC 2026, and it’s possible we’ll get it. But everything we’ve seen suggests that Apple is going to spend the entire keynote talking about new AI features presented in a new interface, and none at all explaining how it’s going to use AI to make existing functions work even half decently.

If you’d like to keep up with the very latest news and rumors as we lead up to the event, bookmark our WWDC topic zone. Fingers crossed, and see you on June 8.