Siri AI Is Becoming Apple’s Everything Tool
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
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 the 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 waitlist; you'll receive a notification when you are off the waitlist 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.
The BriefWire