Apple’s WWDC 2025 May Underwhelm on AI, Says Gurman — Bigger Leap Expected in 2026

Apple’s WWDC 2025 May Underwhelm on AI, Says Gurman — Bigger Leap Expected in 2026

Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), kicking off June 9, may fall short of expectations on the artificial intelligence front, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

In his latest newsletter, Gurman reveals that internal concerns at Apple suggest WWDC 2025 could highlight the company’s lagging AI progress, especially compared to competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. While Apple is preparing several AI-powered features, insiders believe the real leap won’t come until WWDC 2026, raising questions about how the company plans to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving AI space.

What Is Expected at WWDC 2025:

AI Developer Tools

  • Foundation Models (≈3B parameters) will open to third-party developers for in-app integration.

  • These models will power basic on-device tasks like text summarization, but remain far smaller than ChatGPT or Gemini.

AI Features Across the OS

  • AI-powered battery saver mode

  • A refreshed Translate app, now integrated with AirPods and Siri

  • Some Safari and Photos tools rebranded as “AI-powered”, even if the tech behind them is modest

Design Overhaul with “Solarium”

  • The standout update is expected to be a full UI redesign, codenamed Solarium, inspired by visionOS (used in Vision Pro).

  • Apple aims for consistency across platforms (iOS, macOS, iPadOS), though some fear this could underscore Apple’s AI gap rather than fix it.

Developer Tools Upgrades

  • Built-in rich text editor for SwiftUI

  • Enhanced UI testing

  • Updates to Swift Assist, Apple’s in-house AI code helper

  • Internal testing of an Anthropic-powered AI assistant for Xcode

What’s Not Ready Yet (Targeting 2026):

  • LLM Siri: A reimagined Siri with fluid, ChatGPT-style conversations

  • New Shortcuts App: Lets users build automations using natural language via Apple Intelligence

  • AI Health Coach (Mulberry) and a redesigned Health app

  • Internal chatbot (rumored name: “Knowledge”), delayed due to hallucination issues and internal debates

Gurman reports that Apple is testing models as large as 150 billion parameters internally — competitive with GPT-4 — but concerns around reliability and privacy have so far kept Apple from entering the public chatbot race. Instead, employees test these models using a tool called Playground, comparing Apple’s results with outputs from OpenAI and others.

Don’t Expect Hardware

No major hardware is planned for WWDC. The next iPhones and Apple Watches are still set for a Fall 2025 debut.

Looking Ahead

Apple's AI roadmap appears focused on long-term stability and user privacy, rather than trying to outpace rivals with flashy demos. Still, Gurman notes that Apple risks falling behind on mindshare unless it delivers more AI breakthroughs soon.

WWDC 2025 will likely be remembered as the debut of Apple’s “Solarium” interface and year-based OS naming (iOS 26, macOS 26, etc.) — not its big AI moment. That may have to wait until 2026.

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