According to engadget, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports Apple plans to announce a new, Gemini-powered Siri in the second half of February. This demo will show off capabilities from Apple’s partnership with Google. Following that, the new Siri will enter beta testing in iOS 26.4 in February, with a public release slated for March or early April. The full, grand reveal of the Siri upgrade, currently codenamed Campos, is then planned for Apple’s annual developer conference this summer. Finally, the complete Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence features are expected to launch with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, which will enter beta this summer.
Siri finally gets a brain
Here’s the thing: this timeline is fascinating, and a bit messy. We’re getting a preview in February, a beta in the spring, and the real deal not until fall. It tells you Apple is scrambling to catch up. They announced “Apple Intelligence” with great fanfare at WWDC 2024, but the most hyped part—the ChatGPT-like chatbot—was outsourced to OpenAI. Now, a year later, they’re finally ready to show their own in-house version, powered by Google’s Gemini. I think the big question is: what took so long? And can this partnership-based approach ever feel as seamless as Apple usually demands?
What this means for your iPhone
For users, the promise is a Siri that’s actually useful. Basically, it should stop being a joke. The reports say it’ll behave more like a true AI chatbot, meaning you can have a real conversation with it, ask complex questions, and get helpful, contextual answers. But there’s a catch. The full experience, with all the deep Apple Intelligence features, won’t land until iOS 27 this fall. So that February demo? It’s probably just a taste. The real test is whether it can work entirely on-device for privacy, or if it’ll need to phone home to Google’s servers constantly.
A shifting competitive landscape
This move solidifies the weirdest alliance in tech right now: Apple and Google. Apple gets a top-tier AI model without building it from scratch, and Google gets its tech on billions of devices. It’s a pragmatic move, but it feels un-Apple. They’re ceding control of a core experience. For developers, the summer WWDC reveal will be crucial—they’ll need to see how deeply this new Siri can integrate with their apps. If it’s just a chatbot overlay, it’s a miss. If it’s a true system-level intelligence that can manipulate apps and data, that’s a game-changer. We’ll have to wait and see which one Apple delivers.
