If you happen to have been to take a shot each time somebody talked about “agentic” AI at the latest tech keynotes — Google I/O, Microsoft Build and NVIDIA’s Computex blowout — you would be sick very quickly. It is the trade’s newest buzzword, describing AI agents that may do work in your behalf with none direct enter, like robotically including conferences to your calendar based mostly in your emails. It is as if the tech world cannot wait to sit down again and let AI take the wheel. We’ll most likely see spectacular agentic AI inside a decade or so, however I fear about leaping right into a world of brokers with our present batch of AI fashions, which may nonetheless hallucinate and are not fully reliable. The thought of letting present AI brokers act fully on their very own looks like sheer madness.
Apple, as soon as once more, appears to be considering a bit in a different way. Agentic AI was solely briefly talked about throughout its WWDC 2026 keynote this week. As an alternative, Apple spent the vast majority of the time speaking in regards to the methods its new Siri AI might truly be helpful: Like discovering a pal’s new tackle buried in an extended textual content message thread, or determining easy methods to get tickets to an unique live performance. For probably the most half, Siri AI responds to your instructions, it simply has the advantage of fashionable AI fashions to raised synthesize information.
Primarily based on our early look at Siri AI at WWDC 2026, it appears to work as marketed, although we’ll must carry out long-term testing to see if it actually holds up. We’re additionally coping with the primary developer beta, so there’s a whole lot of room for issues to vary between now and when Apple’s newest OS updates drop this fall. However as an AI skeptic, I am stunned to search out myself intrigued by the chances of Siri AI, extra so than I have been for something round Microsoft’s Copilot.
Apple’s commitment to privacy with Personal Cloud Compute additionally offers it a leg up on Google and Microsoft — the corporate says it solely uploads related information, makes all of it nameless and does not monitor server logs. For its new AFM3 Cloud Professional mannequin, which runs on Google’s servers with NVIDIA-powered {hardware}, Apple has additionally upgraded Personal Cloud Compute to supply the same quantity of safety.
“Whereas we completely decrease what is shipped as much as PCC, the essential factor about PCC is, architecturally, that is at that time an effectivity measure,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software program engineering, mentioned throughout a WWDC panel (via Ars Technica). “As a result of PCC itself, by design from the bottom up, goes to vaporize any report of that information the second after it solutions your query… This isn’t saved. It is all in a kind the place it is fully transient.”
Apple could not resist the attract of agentic AI fully, although. And never surprisingly, it is also tied to one of many extra troubling new Apple Intelligence features: The power to robotically change your compromised passwords. Apple claims the brand new Passwords app “securely navigates by way of web sites to check in and improve their accounts to robust passwords.”
The potential points are apparent: What else can occur when Apple Intelligence logs into that web site? Can I actually belief the password it comes up with? Then once more, I additionally know I nonetheless have compromised passwords on unimportant web sites, would not or not it’s higher to have these robotically mounted? The purpose of creating customers safer could also be definitely worth the slight lack of company by way of Apple’s agent, however it’s a slippery slope.
Apple can be utilizing agentic AI with Safari’s new “Notify Me” function, which helps you to arrange an alert for particular modifications on an internet site. It could possibly be helpful for monitoring value modifications or information updates round a particular group — it is actually much better than holding a tab open perpetually and continually refreshing it. It is easy to see how Apple might take this function additional: Possibly ultimately AI might robotically buy a sizzling product earlier than it goes out of inventory, or ship an e mail to a gaggle of buddies when you’re eyeing a trip property’s pricing.
You may argue that Apple is way behind its rivals with regards to AI normally, and also you’d have a degree. Microsoft and Google rushed to shove their AI capabilities into each nook and cranny of their shopper merchandise, which made their buyers joyful (even when it arguably made these merchandise worse). Apple, in the meantime, has struggled with delays for its AI-powered Siri improve, which was first introduced two years in the past. The primary batch of Apple Intelligence options, like notification summaries and Genmojis, have been pretty underwhelming (and within the case of these summaries, it led to some embarrassing mistakes).
Apple isn’t the primary to new expertise, although. It did not make the primary MP3 participant, smartphone or ultraportable laptop computer. As an alternative, the corporate has usually targeted on fixing evident points from early market entrants, making its options extra usable for shoppers, and, after all, charging a ton of cash for the privilege of utilizing its extra refined merchandise. The iPod was a hit as a result of it might maintain a ton of music, was simple to make use of and it was tied to iTunes, the primary main try at making digital music legally out there. The iPhone succeeded by leapfrogging keyboard-bound smartphones with a bigger display screen and extra usable apps.
With Siri AI, Apple has the hindsight of seeing the place Microsoft failed with Copilot, and it has a clearer imaginative and prescient of the AI options individuals may very well wish to use. It can undoubtedly lean into extra agentic options as its fashions enhance and shoppers get extra used to AI. I am simply hoping Apple stays considered about the way it applies agentic options. I am already anxious about Siri mishearing my voice instructions, I do not wish to fear about it clearing out my checking account.
