AI
Apple's overhauled Siri finally works—but the fanfare feels muted in a crowded AI landscape
After years of delays, Apple's reimagined AI assistant arrives competent but lacks the novelty appeal it might have commanded had it launched sooner.
TechCrunch — AI
Apple has at long last delivered on its vision for Siri. The revamped AI assistant, now in iOS 27's public beta following a series of postponements, understands personal context, draws on broad knowledge to answer queries, and retrieves information from your device. Yet for all that capability, the moment feels underwhelming.
The timing problem is unavoidable. The months and years Apple spent refining Siri have seen the competitive landscape shift dramatically. AI tools now write code, agents handle complex multi-step workflows, and systems reason, create media, and interact with computers in increasingly sophisticated ways. A functional conversational assistant, no matter how solid, simply doesn't command the same sense of breakthrough it once might have.
What Siri can now do#
The improvements are genuine. Users can hold natural, flowing conversations with Siri, tweaking how the assistant speaks to them—controlling its expressivity and pace. For the first time, Siri operates as a dedicated app where you can reference past exchanges. You can also type instead of speaking.
The assistant mines your personal context to surface photos, emails, contacts, texts, and calendar events, even when your request is vague or you've forgotten where something lives. Ask it to find your last saved receipt without specifying what receipt or where it's stored, and it retrieves it. The same applies to information you've captured as photos—your driver's license number from a photo of the card, or a QR code screenshot.
Siri can now reliably play the music, podcast, or audiobook you ask for on your chosen app—a seemingly basic function that was a notorious weak point. It also launches apps and websites, handles directions, edits photos, drafts messages, and plays audiobooks.
The assistant can brainstorm with you: refining ideas, explaining unfamiliar topics, suggesting meals based on ingredients you name. It answers questions about concert dates and event schedules using your location as context. Even the Camera app's viewfinder integrates Siri to identify real-world objects or split restaurant bills.
How Apple got there#
Behind Siri's comeback lies a partnership with Google. Rather than simply rebranding Gemini, Apple leveraged Google's models to train and refine its own proprietary foundation models—systems built to run on Apple Silicon and its Private Cloud Compute infrastructure. The result actually performs as intended.
