Apple has built the new Siri to help you get things done — not to keep you company.
At WWDC this week, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said positioning Siri as a utility assistant was a deliberate choice. He described competing AI products as built for "engagement" and "sycophancy," accusing them of drawing users in and mining personal disclosures to simulate connection. Apple's approach goes the other direction: Siri is designed to redirect you if you try to use it as a romantic partner. "Siri's 100 percent not into that," Federighi said.
The context matters. AI companion companies have faced multiple lawsuits in recent years after users formed intense attachments to chatbots, with some cases resulting in real-world injury or death. Apple is drawing a deliberate reputational and legal moat by loudly rejecting that category. For a company that has spent years marketing on trust and privacy, "we are not trying to make you dependent on us" is a calculated message — particularly as regulators begin paying closer attention to AI's social effects.
Worth noting: Siri has spent the better part of a decade losing ground to competitors on basic utility tasks. Framing the absence of personality as principled design is a cleaner story than the alternative — though in this case, it may also simply be true.