Apple’s Siri has always been the butt of the joke when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. Years of missed updates and broken promises left it feeling like an afterthought. That changes with iOS 27. As reported by Wired, Apple’s newly rebuilt Siri, now called Siri AI, is available to the general public for the first time through the iOS 27 public beta. It’s a big deal for the hundreds of millions of people who own iPhones.
This isn’t a minor update. Apple showed off Siri AI at its WWDC event in June, positioning it as something closer to ChatGPT than the old tap-and-ask voice tool. The new version adds a standalone chatbot app, deep integration across the operating system, and the ability to understand what’s actually on your screen at any given moment. It’s been tested by developers for weeks, and now everyday users can try it too.
The early impressions are genuinely positive. In hands-on testing with an earlier developer beta, Siri AI could find old vacation photos, send texts, and recommend a local breakfast spot, all from simple, natural prompts. It wasn’t perfect, but it was useful in a way the old Siri rarely was. For iPhone owners who gave up on Siri years ago, it’s worth another look.
One of the most significant changes is that Siri is now baked into the iPhone’s search function. Swipe down from the middle of your screen and you’ll see a combined Search or Ask bar. Type a question, hit enter, and Siri handles it. Ask for driving directions and it opens Maps with a route already loaded. It’s a small interaction, but it shows how tightly Apple has wired this new version into the phone’s core behavior.
Nabila Popal, a senior research director at International Data Corporation who focuses on consumer devices, put it clearly: “They’ve integrated it across the entire ecosystem, so you can access Siri AI no matter where you are on the device. You can talk to it. You can also access it via an app. So, the accessibility of Siri AI and its integration across the operating system were really well done.”
The new Siri app itself works like a chat log. You can browse past conversations, restart old threads, or kick off new ones. It looks familiar if you’ve used ChatGPT or Claude, though it’s missing some features those apps have by default. There’s no memory function yet, which means Siri won’t remember your preferences between sessions. Tell it you’re vegan when asking for recipes today, and you’ll have to tell it again tomorrow. Apple is expected to add more capabilities over time, but it’s worth knowing what you’re signing up for right now.
The more interesting capability is what Apple calls personal context. Before Siri AI can use it, your phone has to go through an indexing process, labeled in the software as “Optimizing Search and Siri.” This builds a searchable database of your messages, calendar, photos, and more, all stored on the device. It took about a week to complete in testing, though your experience may vary.
Once indexed, Siri can pull from all of that to give genuinely useful answers. Ask what you have going on this week and Siri might surface a package arriving from an order you mentioned in a text, flag a friend’s birthday on your calendar, and remind you about a movie your group chat was discussing. Josh Clark, principal at digital-design agency Big Medium and co-author of Sentient Design, explained the advantage: “Siri AI has access to the kind of context that things like ChatGPT and Claude can’t easily have, because Siri is cooked into the operating system.”
If you don’t want Siri learning from specific apps, you can control that in Settings under Siri AI, then App Access. Toggle off “Learn from this App” for any app you want to exclude. By default, if Siri AI is turned on, all apps are included.
Siri’s onscreen awareness is another standout feature. This was partly available before under the name Visual Intelligence, but it’s more capable now. During testing, while scrolling Bluesky and seeing posts about singer Lorde criticizing Meta’s AI smartglasses, the tester asked Siri “Where did she say this?” without any extra context. Siri read what was on the screen, understood who “she” referred to, confirmed the comment happened at a festival in Madrid, and provided links. That kind of contextual understanding is new territory for Siri.
Apple also added a dedicated Siri tab inside the camera app. Tap the main button and Siri analyzes what the camera sees and gives you a brief summary. There are also options to upload an image with a custom prompt, or to search the web for related content. Swipe down on Siri’s response and it expands into a longer answer with source links.
Beyond the iPhone, Siri AI also runs on iPads and Macs, with screenshot integrations on iPad and a dedicated shortcut on Mac. Even the Vision Pro gets the new version. That said, hardware requirements apply. On iPhone specifically, Siri AI only works on the iPhone 15 Pro and newer models. Downloading iOS 27 doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get the new Siri if your device doesn’t meet the threshold.
There’s also a writing tool built in. “Write with Siri” lets you describe what you want to say in a message or note, and Siri drafts it for you in a natural-sounding style. It’s a clear improvement over the basic auto-suggest options that came before it.
It’s fair to point out that Android users with Google’s Gemini assistant have had some of these capabilities for a while. Popal noted that “the average Apple user is still not aware of what AI features are already available on Android devices.” That’s a reasonable critique. But for the massive base of iPhone users in the US, many of whom have never seriously engaged with an AI assistant on their phone, Siri AI represents a genuine shift in what their device can do.
To try it yourself, sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program and download the iOS 27 public beta. Back up your device first, just in case. After installing, go into Settings to join the Siri AI wait list. You’ll get a notification when access is ready. It’s worth the setup time if you’re curious about where Apple is taking this.
