Siri AI Is Becoming Apple’s Everything Tool
Apple’s revamped Siri is more than a voice assistant; it’s now the backbone of the iPhone user experience. You can try it now through the iOS 27 public beta.
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.
