Apple’s new Siri AI finally catches up to competitors in a key area where it has suffered

by MWN News

June 10, 2026

in Apps

Reading Time: 5 mins read

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The Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) event this month kicked off with a presentation focused entirely around Siri AI, the company’s new Apple Intelligence update. With Siri AI, Apple has finally caught up with competitors in most areas, including an important photo editing feature that had remained awful on Apple Intelligence.

Object erasing in photos

Till now, using Apple’s suite of AI tools to try and erase objects in photos more often than not resulted in very bad outcomes. It seemed like the AI models were just taking a literal eraser to the photo and leaving a smudged mess behind.

That has finally changed, as Siri AI hands-on experiences are showing. Not only are results much better than before, but Siri is also able to match and, in some cases, exceed the capabilities of its competitors.

Siri AI finally catches up

This is an image editing feature that has been available on Samsung, Google, and Chinese smartphones for years at this point. Apple is pretty late to the party, and the only reason Siri is as good as it is now is because it was designed on Gemini.
However, it is worth keeping in mind that Apple is not using the same Gemini models that Google is currently using. The company is also working on its own in-house models for a possible future integration.

Craig Federighi says at a post-event talk with media that Apple isn’t using the same Gemini models that Google deploys to its own users.

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) June 8, 2026

It’s not all perfect, though

Apple Intelligence still isn’t perfect. | Images by Digital Chat Station

Siri AI might be better than ever before, but it still has a long way to go. As seen here (translated source), the object eraser tool can still mess up from time to time, though that is also true for other AI services.

What Apple has done here is take the first step to providing AI tools that can keep up with rival flagship smartphones. Hopefully, it’s only up from here.

Unfortunately, it also seems that the new Siri might gate off some features on older Apple products, even those as recent as the standard model of the iPhone 17 series. Yep, the iPhone 18 will likely get more RAM just to be able to run Apple’s best on-device model, and people are not happy about that.

For many customers, AI isn’t reason enough to upgrade their phone. | Image by X

Apple took a jab at its rivals

What I found really funny is how Apple covered for its two years of disappointing AI and broken promises for features shown off at WWDC 2024. Craig Federighi said that Apple was being more careful with AI while others raced ahead.To an extent, I suppose that is true. Ever since it was revealed that the Meta Ray-Ban glasses leak intimate moments, I’ve sworn off of Meta’s products, especially those that use AI. If Apple can promise real user privacy, I’m all for that.

But let’s not pretend that Apple’s delays in making a competent Siri were anything other than mismanagement inside the company on a very large scale.

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