Apple's Siri could get more than a massive update: it could get a super-powered friend

We won't see it at Apple's "Glowtime" iPhone event on 9 September. But Apple is reportedly working on a new personal assistant – not to replace Siri, but to hang out with them in your home.

Siri will remain as your personal digital assistant on devices such as the iPhone 16 and M-series Macs such as the imminent M4 Macs, and with the arrival of Apple Intelligence in the next versions of iOS, iPadOS and macOS Siri should become considerably smarter and more responsive. But Apple is reportedly creating a second, separate digital personality. If this were a movie, Siri would be Wall-E and the new personality would be Eve.

Why Apple's maybe making a second Siri

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a "humanlike" interface that's based on generative AI technology. It's being designed with Apple's rumoured robot iPad in mind, an iPad that can move around, and it's also intended to be the main way you communicate with future Apple robotics devices.

There's a slight problem with that, though. As Gurman says, "the technology is going to be incredibly expensive for both Apple to build and for consumers to buy".

While the idea of a house full of Apple AIs with different personalities is an interesting one, it definitely isn't imminent. Apple's taking baby steps into AI, and there's a long way between summarising your incoming text messages or emails and being an entire personality that you'll want to interact with. And Apple has been much more cautious about generative AI than the likes of Google or Microsoft, so we're a long way from seeing any product.

That's assuming that this ever becomes a product. As Gurman himself admits, some Apple insiders "say it’s an exaggeration to describe robotics as some major new frontier that the company will be able to conquer." This could be another Apple Car, a project that Apple chucks staff and cash at for several years without actually shipping a finished product.

Whatever Apple's planning for the longer term, the current focus is Apple Intelligence – and we'll see much more of that at the Apple event on 9 September. Hopefully we'll also get an announcement that Apple has reconsidered its US-only stance for its AI features, because without it the iPhone 16 feels like a relatively minor upgrade.