When Apple integrated the Siri digital assistant into its iPhone 4s 13 years ago, it was hailed as a new era for smartphones. Of course, it was a funny novelty as much as it was a genuine help in those early days, but Siri did end up popularising speech as a way to control your devices.

Yet over the next few years, it was thoroughly overtaken in capability by Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.

Now, with many devices being upgraded with generative AI chatbots, Apple is preparing to catch up. When it unveils its iPhone 16 next week, it will do so in the context of a leap in its natural language interface the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2011. Here’s what you can expect.

Apple Intelligence will be integrated throughout iOS 18 on the new iPhone, as well as on last........

© The Sydney Morning Herald