Siri is the main reason a lot of us tuned into Apple's Surprise and Shine event today, arguably more than the iPhone 18 Pro or the foldable iPhone Ultra sharing the stage with it. Apple has been selling a rebuilt assistant since 2024, and iOS 27 is where it finally has to stop being a promise.
Apple says people already make over two and a half billion Siri requests every single day, so this is not a niche feature getting a refresh.
Siri now has its own app sitting on the home screen. | Image by Apple
Siri AI is out of the bag, so today is about the date
Apple announced Siri AI at WWDC in June and has been testing it across the iOS 27 betas since, so today was less a reveal than a release date and a demo running on new hardware.
Every Siri AI improvement in iOS 27
A standalone Siri app: a real chatbot that sits on your home screen, with conversations synced privately across your Apple devices through iCloud.
Personal context: Siri finds what it needs across apps like Mail and Messages, so it can pull a recipe your mom sent you weeks ago.
On-screen awareness: Siri sees what you see and combines it with broader world knowledge to answer.
Actions across apps: Siri completes tasks inside more than 300,000 apps, including WhatsApp, Audible, Outlook and Tripadvisor.
Siri in the Camera app: ask questions about what is in frame and take action without leaving it.
Write with Siri: drafting and editing wherever you type, including inside third-party mail apps.
Expressive voices: pick from multiple options, then tune the pace and expressivity of each one.
System-wide dictation: noticeably better at getting punctuation, spelling and capitalization right.
Recommended For You
Apple credited its own Foundation Models and Private Cloud Compute for all of it, and made no mention of the Google arrangement that reporting ahead of today had pointed to.
Which new Siri ability would you use first?
9 Votes
Siri AI still has ground to make up on Gemini
For anyone holding an iPhone, the practical change is that Siri should stop answering with three web excerpts and a shrug. Our own beta testing has tracked it getting faster and sharper through the summer, though it is arriving into a category that did not wait around for Apple.
Siri handling requests from the lock screen, the Camera app, Shortcuts, dictation and its own conversation history. | Images by Apple
The numbers behind that are not flattering. A YouGov BrandIndex survey running from March 1 to July 31 measured satisfaction across the ten biggest AI assistants, and Siri finished near the bottom of the table next to Grok, according to a new report. Claude topped it at 56.2, with Gemini on 46.5 and ChatGPT just behind on 46.0.
That survey covers the old Siri rather than Siri AI, of course, so treat it as a baseline and not a verdict.
So where does that leave the rivals. Gemini has had personal context on Pixel and Galaxy phones for a while, and in our own testing Siri AI was still not as good as Gemini, with an irritating bug that cuts the assistant off mid-prompt.
If you are carrying a Pixel 10 Pro or a Galaxy S26 Ultra, there is no urgency here for you at all. Still, the baseline for every rival assistant just got raised, because Siri AI ships by default to well over a billion iPhones, which is distribution Google and OpenAI have to earn one download at a time.
Siri AI needs an iPhone 15 Pro or newer
There are real limits worth knowing before anyone rushes to update. Siri AI needs recent hardware, and Apple tied the expressive voices and the on-device model powering them directly to the iPhone 18 Pro on stage.
Pace and expressivity sliders let you tune how Siri sounds. | Image by Apple
Siri AI is rolling out in beta in English, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish arriving in October. Apple also said some features carry usage limits because they lean on server models, and that increased access comes with most iCloud+ plans, which is the first time a Siri capability has been tied to a subscription tier.
Apple Intelligence covers 16 languages, and the fine print rules out China. | Image by Apple
I want to see Siri work, not hear another promise
I noticed my own bar for this got very specific after a couple of years of using Gemini on a Pixel every day. It is not whether Siri can hold a conversation, it is whether it can do something useful with my own calendar and mail without me quietly checking its work afterwards.
I am hoping we got a firm date today instead of another "later this year," because a Siri that finally works is genuinely good news for the many people I know who gave up on that button years ago.
Mint Mobile is now allowing you to get whichever plan you like for either three, six, or 12 months for just $15/mo. If you go for the six-month unlimited service, for instance, you'll now have to pay just $90 upfront instead of $210.
Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
To help keep our community safe and free from spam, we apply temporary limits to newly created accounts:
New accounts created within the last 24 hours may experience restrictions on how frequently they can
post or comment.
These limits are in place as a precaution and will automatically lift.
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
Things that are NOT allowed:
To help keep our community safe and free from spam, we apply temporary limits to newly created accounts: