By Daniel Howley

Apple (AAPL) on Monday debuted a next-generation version of its Siri personal assistant that seeks to pull the long-neglected digital helper into the AI era as part of the company's Worldwide Developer Conference.

The new Siri, called Siri AI, and enhancements to the company's Apple Intelligence platform are the centerpieces of Apple's effort to reset its AI strategy, after a series of delays led to criticism from investors and users alike.

Apple's pitch: AI that's both personal and private. During the company's keynote, senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi framed Apple's offerings as more purposeful than those from competing firms that add AI to their products for the sake of it.

The approach is meant to differentiate Apple's AI from the likes of OpenAI's (OPAI.PVT) ChatGPT or Anthropic's (ANTH.PVT) Claude by focusing on mainstream rather than AI power users.

"I feel like it's AI for the masses," TECHnalysis Research founder and chief analyst Bob O'Donnell told Yahoo Finance.

"They're talking to the mainstream, they're talking to the consumer. They're not trying to focus on developers, ironically, even though we're at WWDC," he added.

IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo offered a similar sentiment, writing in a statement that consumers are less interested in the ins and outs of AI models, and more interested in what they can do for them.

"Apple is trying to make AI feel native, useful and invisible across the devices people already use every day," he wrote.

"This matters because the winning AI experience for consumers will not be the loudest or most technically complex. It will be the one that understands context, respects privacy, works reliably across apps, and reduces friction without forcing users to change behaviour," Jeronimo added.