I'm glad Apple isn't hyping up agentic AI (yet)

If you were to take a shot every time someone mentioned "agentic" AI at the most recent tech keynotes — Google I/O, Microsoft Build and NVIDIA's Computex blowout — you'd be sick in no time. It's the industry's latest buzzword, describing AI agents that can do work on your behalf without any direct input, like automatically adding meetings to your calendar based on your emails. It's as if the tech world can't wait to sit back and let AI take the wheel. We'll probably see impressive agentic AI within a decade or so, but I worry about leaping into a world of agents with our current batch of AI models, which can still hallucinate and aren't entirely trustworthy. The idea of letting current AI agents act entirely on their own seems like sheer insanity.

Apple, once again, seems to be thinking a bit differently. Agentic AI was only briefly mentioned during its WWDC 2026 keynote this week. Instead, Apple spent the majority of the time talking about the ways its new Siri AI could actually be useful: Like finding a friend's new address buried in a long text message thread, or figuring out how to get tickets to an exclusive concert. For the most part, Siri AI responds to your commands, it just has the benefit of modern AI models to better synthesize data.

Based on our early look at Siri AI at WWDC 2026, it seems to work as advertised, though we'll need to perform long-term testing to see if it really holds up. We're also dealing with the first developer beta, so there's a lot of room for things to change between now and when Apple's latest OS updates drop this fall. But as an AI skeptic, I'm surprised to find myself intrigued by the possibilities of Siri AI, more so than I've been for anything around Microsoft's Copilot.

Apple's commitment to privacy with Private Cloud Compute also gives it a leg up on Google and Microsoft — the company says it only uploads relevant data, makes it all anonymous and doesn't track server logs. For its new AFM3 Cloud Pro model, which runs on Google's servers with NVIDIA-powered hardware, Apple has also upgraded Private Cloud Compute to offer a similar amount of security.

"While we absolutely minimize what is sent up to PCC, the critical thing about PCC is, architecturally, that's at that point an efficiency measure," Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of software engineering, said during a WWDC panel (via Ars Technica). "Because PCC itself, by design from the ground up, is going to vaporize any record of that data the moment after it answers your question... This is not stored. It's all in a form where it's completely transient."

Apple couldn't resist the allure of agentic AI entirely, though. And not surprisingly, it's also tied to one of the more troubling new Apple Intelligence features: The ability to automatically change your compromised passwords. Apple claims the new Passwords app "securely navigates through websites to sign in and upgrade their accounts to strong passwords."

The potential issues are obvious: What else can happen when Apple Intelligence logs into that website? Can I really trust the password it comes up with? Then again, I also know I still have compromised passwords on unimportant websites, wouldn't it be better to have those automatically fixed? The goal of making users more secure may be worth the slight loss of agency through Apple's agent, but it's a slippery slope.

Apple is also using agentic AI with Safari's new "Notify Me" feature, which lets you set up an alert for specific changes on a website. It could be useful for tracking price changes or news updates around a specific organization — it's certainly far better than keeping a tab open forever and constantly refreshing it. It's easy to see how Apple could take this feature further: Maybe eventually AI could automatically purchase a hot product before it goes out of stock, or send an email to a group of friends if you're eyeing a vacation property's pricing.

You could argue that Apple is far behind its competitors when it comes to AI in general, and you'd have a point. Microsoft and Google rushed to shove their AI capabilities into every nook and cranny of their consumer products, which made their investors happy (even if it arguably made those products worse). Apple, meanwhile, has struggled with delays for its AI-powered Siri upgrade, which was first announced two years ago. The first batch of Apple Intelligence features, like notification summaries and Genmojis, were fairly underwhelming (and in the case of those summaries, it led to some embarrassing mistakes).

Apple is rarely the first to new technology, though. It didn't make the first MP3 player, smartphone or ultraportable laptop. Instead, the company has typically focused on fixing glaring issues from early market entrants, making its solutions more usable for consumers, and, of course, charging a ton of money for the privilege of using its more refined products. The iPod was a success because it could hold a ton of music, was easy to use and it was tied to iTunes, the first major attempt at making digital music legally available. The iPhone succeeded by leapfrogging keyboard-bound smartphones with a larger screen and more usable apps.

With Siri AI, Apple has the hindsight of seeing where Microsoft failed with Copilot, and it has a clearer vision of the AI features people may actually want to use. It will undoubtedly lean into more agentic features as its models improve and consumers get more used to AI. I'm just hoping Apple remains judicious about how it applies agentic features. I'm already worried about Siri mishearing my voice commands, I don't want to worry about it clearing out my bank account.