Why Apple's best new AI features at WWDC 2025 will be deliciously seamless

It’s not far-fetched to call today’s WWDC Apple’s most important event of the year — it might even be its most important event this decade, with major implications for where the company stands in today’s AI space race.

Off the back of developer conferences by Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic, the folks at Cupertino find themselves even further behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry — or at least it seems that way. Even my dad, who still rocks an iPhone 8 because he “can’t live without Touch ID,” understands that for Apple to leapfrog the competition, it must convince the public that it, too, can do AI. AI, the Apple way.

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While the value of the company’s “Apple Intelligence” features has been rather disappointing, there’s one thing I don’t want to see during today’s keynote: extravagance. Cut out the lavish image and video generators, circle to searches, and the chatbots that impersonate celebrities. And please, don’t seclude any AI tools in separate hardware. 

Instead, give me features that blend so seamlessly with my daily apps and services that I almost forget they exist.

Early reports by Bloomberg suggest that this is, indeed, the path Apple will take when pitching the future of AI to the masses today. Instead of forcing AI features onto users, the company will reportedly take its foot off the gas pedal and focus more on features that users are already using. That includes Messages, FaceTime, Apple Music, Phone, and more.

Real-time text translation and poll options in Messages, improved battery management, and further integration with Gemini will be among the subtle ways the company can embed AI into its most popular apps. These features should work much like how our phones automatically switch from LTE to Wi-Fi when we step within range of our home routers. 

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Such features might not get as many cheers as AI-generated emojis did last year, but they will likely be the ones you and I will still be using by the end of 2025 — hopefully because they’re so frictionless that we don’t notice the gradual shift in our usage patterns.

The rise and fall of AI hardware is a testament to consumers’ aversion to behavioral changes. Instead, perhaps the right way — and the best way — to introduce AI into people’s lives has always been to meet them where they already are, from the apps they use every day to the gestures they’re familiar with, like prompting Siri. Apple’s new AI features don’t need to be flashy or futuristic; they just need to be boringly awesome.