The latest version of Apple’s smartphone software, iOS 27, is available for iPhone owners as a public beta. It’s the first time Apple’s long-promised revamped version of Siri is available to the general public.
Showcased at the company’s WWDC event in June as “Siri AI,” Apple expanded on the original voice controls of the smartphone assistant, adding a chatbot-style app and further weaving it into the iPhone user experience.
In my initial hands-on with a developer beta version of Siri AI, I was generally impressed by Apple's overhaul. It made the assistant feel actually helpful for navigating my phone and useful for tasks beyond voice-based interactions. Siri AI was able to help find old vacation photos, send quick texts, and pick a decent pancake spot—all from basic prompts—during my limited tests. It wasn't flawless, but the new Siri does feel worth giving a whirl, especially for iPhone owners who rarely, if ever, used the previous version. You might uncover a few hidden gems that become part of your daily usage.
Siri now feels like part of the smartphone’s infrastructure. “They've integrated it across the entire ecosystem, so you can access Siri AI no matter where you are on the device,” says Nabila Popal, a senior research director who focuses on consumer devices at International Data Corporation. “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.” You can still turn Siri off if you remain uninterested, but what Apple is offering may convince some users to rethink how they fundamentally interact with their iPhones.
Below is a guide to some of the major changes to Siri AI, aimed at early adopters interested in downloading the iOS 27 public beta. You can sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program here. It’s always worth backing up your device before you choose to download beta software, just in case anything goes haywire. I’ll note that nothing went wrong with my iPhone 16 Pro Max when I tried the earlier developer betas.
After you download the public beta, you also need to go into your settings to sign up for Apple's Siri wait list; you'll receive a notification when you are off the wait list and ready to take Siri for a spin.
New App
One of Siri AI’s most immediately noticeable changes is the new chatbot-style app. The app is more of an interaction log than anything else. It’s where you can keep track of past Siri chats or reignite previous threads. Sure, you can also start new chats here, but I didn’t find myself doing that very often, since Siri is built into the iPhone’s search functionality now.
Don’t want your Siri chats stored forever? Go into your phone’s Settings, then find Siri AI and open up the Keep Conversations tab. Here’s where you can pick between “forever,” a year, or 30 days. If you change this setting to a shorter timeframe, then chats older than that will be wiped from the app.
Courtesy of Apple
Courtesy of Apple
While the new Siri app will look somewhat familiar to anyone who has tried a chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude, the beta app doesn’t have all the same functionality you might expect. For example, the current Siri app doesn’t have a memory feature to store details about the user’s preferences, which is standard among these chatbots. That means you’ll have to keep reminding Siri AI that you’re vegan when you ask for help finding recipes. It’s worth keeping in mind that this is a fresh release from Apple, and the company is expected to iterate and add new capabilities down the line.
Personal Context
Even after you download the iOS 27 beta and get access to the new Siri, there’s still a chance you might have to wait a bit longer for another process to complete: indexing. “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,” says Josh Clark, principal at digital-design agency Big Medium and coauthor of Sentient Design: Crafting Intelligent Interfaces with AI.
Your iPhone essentially builds a searchable, on-device database during the indexing process. It’s labeled as “Optimizing Search and Siri” in more recent iOS 27 developer betas, with a progress bar now included. It took my device a little over a week to fully index, though your experience with the public beta may differ depending on your device, storage, and the new software version.
This means Siri can easily pull in data from across the device to better answer your questions. For example, on Monday morning, I asked Siri AI what I had on my plate for the week, and it gathered details from my recent text messages to highlight an upcoming order arriving from TikTok Shop. It also nudged me to grab tickets to the movie at the Castro Theater that friends had been discussing in a group chat. In addition to context from my texts, Siri also went through my calendar, marking a birthday party and tickets to a live performance as other key events.
Courtesy of Apple
Courtesy of Apple
Don’t want Siri to use your interactions with a specific app? In your phone’s Settings, go to the Siri AI section and scroll down to App Access. Then, choose which app you want to change and toggle Learn from this App to the left. “Allow Siri to learn how you use this app to make suggestions across apps,” reads a beta version of the description under this toggle. These are enabled by default if Siri AI is turned on.
This revamped Siri is baked into the phone’s search function. So, if you swipe down in the middle of the screen, Siri pops up with a Search or Ask bar. You can type into that blank space or tap the microphone icon to ask your question. If you hit enter, more often than not it will send the query to Siri for answers. For example, I typed “What’s a good route for driving to Sacramento?” into Siri. It pulled up the Maps app with a suggested driving path pre-chosen. Not bad! If you want, you can still tap Show Results below the text bar for the more traditional web search vibe.
Onscreen Awareness
In addition to personal context from that indexing process, Siri can also pull details from what’s currently visible on your screen. This type of onscreen awareness was available before as Siri’s “Visual Intelligence,” and it contributes to Siri feeling like it’s actually helpful no matter what you’re doing.
This makes it easy to double-check something I’m seeing on social media. For example, I was scrolling on Bluesky and saw multiple posts about the singer Lorde criticizing Meta’s AI smartglasses, but I hadn’t seen a source for this news. So, when one of the posts was visible on my screen, I asked Siri AI, “Where did she say this?” I didn’t need to provide specifics about who “she” was or what comment I was referring to; Siri pulled that info from my screen. Then, Siri confirmed that this happened at a festival in Madrid and provided links where I could read more.
For Siri AI, seeing is believing. Well, at least seeing what’s on your screen and what’s around you. Beyond just onscreen awareness, Apple has a new Siri tab in the camera app, alongside your standard photo and video options. If you tap the circular button in the middle, Siri automatically analyzes the images and provides you with a quick paragraph of context. Tapping the message icon on the left uploads an image to Siri with the option to add a prompt for more details. Tapping the image search icon on the right browses the web for relevant links.
If you swipe down on that paragraph from Siri AI, it expands into a longer answer with source links.
Photograph: Reece Rogers
Everything, Everywhere
Siri AI is more than just Apple’s smartphone assistant; it’s also part of the user experience across the entire ecosystem. Siri is on iPads and Macs, with screenshot integrations on iPads and a dedicated shortcut on Macs. Even the Vision Pro has this new Siri, for the handful of readers who actually own that hardware. There are hardware requirements, though. For example, Siri AI is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices—even if you can download iOS 27, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get the new Siri.
Zoning in on the iPhone, Siri AI’s features are even more widespread than I’ve already mentioned above. “Write with Siri” is another tool for when you’re drafting notes or composing text messages. For example, when I was texting my partner about how to organize our apartment, I tapped the Siri button, told it the gist of what I wanted to communicate (more storage bins). Then it drafted a paragraph-long text message that sounded decently like how I would write and loaded it into the message box. A step up from the auto-suggestions of yore.
While this high level of assistance will likely feel fresh to iPhone users, Android phone owners using Google’s Gemini may already know what an adept smartphone assistant feels like on their device. “The average Apple user is still not aware of what AI features are already available on Android devices,” Popal says. While snarky Android owners will likely, and rightfully, highlight some similar tasks a Pixel or Samsung phone could already complete, Siri AI remains a step-change moment for how the millions of iPhone users in the US interact with their devices.
My smartphone, and maybe yours too, is a black hole of highly personal context, with thousands of photos, texts, emails, and calendar appointments, all muddling together in the morass of information. Previously, finding an old text or photo could feel like trudging through a hazy bog of chats and screenshots until finally uncovering the image. By building Siri into the iPhone’s backbone and indexing my device, Apple has created an assistant that actually feels attuned to my specific needs and interactions.
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