Apple Revamps Siri, But the Impact Remains Subtle

Apple Transforms Siri, but the Impact Remains Subtle

After several delays, Siri's AI has arrived in the public beta version of iOS 27, launched in July. The AI assistant now does what Apple promised: it understands your personal context, relies on a vast knowledge of the world to answer your questions, and highlights relevant information stored on your iPhone.

Yet, this arrival seems somewhat disappointing. Apple finally has a functional AI assistant — in fact, quite impressive — but it comes after the market has evolved, making this launch less innovative and exciting.

Indeed, the race for AI has significantly progressed while Apple lagged behind on this topic. Today, AI tools code and build software, AI agents perform complex tasks, and AI works alongside you, using your computer, reasoning, reflecting, remembering, creating media, and more. Being a functional chatbot or AI assistant is no longer the breakthrough it could have been once.

This does not mean that Siri's AI is not valuable or useful. With the launch of Siri AI, Apple has kept its promises and even more.

You can now have natural and interactive conversations with Siri, which has settings allowing you to adjust the expressiveness and pace of its voice responses. You can also type your requests to the assistant if you wish, or use it through a dedicated app for the first time, referring to past conversations.

The assistant can understand your personal context, helping you find items such as photos, emails, contacts, messages, or appointments in your calendar — even when you're not quite sure what you're looking for or where it is. For example, you might ask it to find the last receipt you saved on your iPhone, without specifying where it was stored or what it related to, and Siri will find it for you.

You can also ask it for things you've saved only as a photo, like your driver's license number from an image of your license, or a QR code you captured for later reference, such as a reminder to visit someone's website. You can launch websites and use apps via Siri, performing actions like getting directions, listening to music, editing a photo, drafting an email, listening to your audiobooks, and much more.

Fortunately, Siri now consistently and accurately plays the song, podcast, or audiobook you request on your preferred app — a modest goal, indeed, but an area where Siri previously struggled.

Siri can also brainstorm with you. Among other things, it can help you refine ideas, learn about a new topic, or explore a recipe — like suggesting something you can prepare with the random ingredients in your fridge! You can ask when your favorite band is performing or when a particular event is happening, and Siri responds correctly, providing you with the necessary information based on your location.

You can use Siri in the camera viewfinder to learn more about items in the real world or to help you split a restaurant bill with your friends.

In summary, this is exactly what you always hoped Siri would be: a helpful assistant that allows you to use your iPhone easily, simply by speaking, and that can answer all sorts of questions instead of sending you back to the web.

These improvements have been made possible thanks to Apple's partnership with Google for the use of its Gemini AI models. Apple did not simply slap its name on Gemini AI; it used Google's technology to train and refine its own proprietary models, called Apple Foundation Models. The result is AI models designed to work on Apple Silicon and its Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, and they actually work.

Yet, despite delivering a functional and useful version of Siri, it almost feels like Apple has fixed a long-standing bug — a perpetually failing Siri — rather than achieving something revolutionary. This is how Siri should have worked from the beginning. The only wonder is that after so many years of not performing tasks correctly, it finally works.

The general public, who do not use beta versions on their devices, will have access to the new Siri when Apple officially releases iOS 27, expected in September.