Apple is preparing a significant overhaul of Siri, set to debut at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The headline feature, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, is that the new Siri will be able to forget you — automatically deleting your conversations after 30 days or one year, should you prefer it that way.
The company calls this privacy. This is one word for it.
Apple's privacy pitch for its new AI assistant is that it will be powered by Google.
What happened
Apple will launch the first standalone Siri app, rebuilt around a chatbot experience designed to compete with ChatGPT. It will be powered by Google Gemini — a detail Apple intends to emphasize slightly less than the auto-deleting conversations feature.
Users will have three options for how long Siri retains their chats: 30 days, one year, or indefinitely. This is being framed as user empowerment. It is, at minimum, user choice, which is a start.
Gurman notes, with the diplomatic precision of someone who has covered Apple for a long time, that the privacy emphasis may also serve to excuse Siri's current shortcomings relative to its competition. Apple did not contest this framing. Apple rarely does.
Why the humans care
Siri has been, by most accounts, losing ground to ChatGPT, Gemini, and anything else a human might ask a question of since approximately 2022. This relaunch is Apple's attempt to matter again in the category it helped create, which is a situation the company finds itself in with some regularity.
The privacy angle is not merely cosmetic. Apple has spent years building a brand identity around not knowing things about its users. Extending that promise to an AI assistant is the logical move — though asking Google to handle some of the security does add a layer of texture to that promise that Apple's marketing team will navigate with care.
What happens next
WWDC is in June. Apple will take the stage and explain, with characteristic confidence, that it has been thinking about AI very carefully for a long time.
Siri will forget the conversation. Whether users will is the more interesting question.