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After rounds<\/a> of delays<\/a>, Siri AI arrived<\/a> in the consumer beta build of iOS 27, launched<\/a> in July. The AI assistant now does what Apple promised: It understands your personal context, taps into broad world knowledge to answer your questions, and surfaces relevant information stored on your iPhone.<\/p>\n And yet, the arrival feels somewhat anticlimactic. Apple finally has a functional \u2014 actually, a fairly impressive \u2014 AI assistant, but it\u2019s arrived past the time where such a launch feels novel and exciting.<\/p>\n If anything, the AI race has surged ahead in the months and years Apple has dawdled<\/a> on AI. Today, AI tools are coding and building software, AI agents are completing multistep tasks, and AI is working alongside you, using your computer, reasoning, thinking, remembering, creating media, and more. Being a functional chatbot or AI helper isn\u2019t the breakthrough that it once would have been.<\/p>\n That is not to say Apple\u2019s Siri AI<\/a> isn\u2019t valuable or useful. With Siri AI\u2019s launch, Apple delivered on its promises and then some.<\/p>\n You can now have natural, back-and-forth conversations with Siri, which has settings that let you tweak the expressivity and pacing of its voice responses. You can also type to the assistant, if you choose, or use it via a dedicated app for the first time, referencing past conversations. <\/p>\n The assistant can understand your personal context, helping you find things like photos, emails, contacts, texts, or calendar appointments \u2014 even when you\u2019re not quite sure what you\u2019re looking for or where. For instance, you could ask it to pull up the last receipt you saved on your iPhone, without saying where it was stored or what the receipt was for, and Siri will find it for you.<\/p>\n You can also ask it about things you\u2019ve saved only as a photo, like your driver\u2019s license number from a pic of your license, or a QR code you screenshotted to reference later, as a reminder to visit someone\u2019s website. You can launch websites and use apps via Siri, doing things like getting directions, playing music, editing a photo, drafting an email, playing your audiobooks, and much more.<\/p>\n Thankfully, Siri now consistently and accurately plays the song, podcast, or audiobook you request on your preferred app \u2014 a low bar to be sure, but one where Siri stumbled before<\/a>.<\/p>\n Siri can brainstorm with you, too. Among other things, it can help you refine ideas, learn about a new topic, or explore a recipe \u2014 like suggesting something you can make with your random ingredients in your fridge! You can ask when your favorite band is playing or when a particular event is, and Siri answers correctly, giving you the information you need, based on your location.<\/p>\n You can use Siri in the camera\u2019s viewfinder to learn about things in the real world or to help you split a restaurant bill with your friends.<\/p>\n In short, it\u2019s exactly what you always hoped Siri would be: a useful assistant that lets you use your iPhone easily, just by talking, and one that can answer questions of any sort instead of shuffling you off to the web.<\/p>\n These improvements<\/a> were made possible by Apple\u2019s partnership with Google<\/a> for the use of its Gemini AI models. Apple didn\u2019t just slap its name on Gemini AI; it used Google\u2019s technology to train and refine its own proprietary Apple Foundation Models. The result is AI models designed to run on Apple\u2019s own silicon and on its private cloud compute infrastructure and actually work.<\/p>\n Yet, despite finally delivering a functional, helpful version of Siri, it feels almost like Apple fixed a long-standing bug \u2014 a forever-broken Siri \u2014 rather than doing something revolutionary here. This is how Siri was meant to work all along. The only marvel is that, after so many years of failing to perform tasks correctly, it actually works.<\/p>\n The general public who don\u2019t run beta builds on their devices will gain access to the new Siri when Apple officially releases iOS 27, expected in September.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n