Siri AI Announced
Apple (Hacker News):
Siri AI is an entirely new version of Siri deeply integrated into iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. It can draw on personal context understanding to search across messages, emails, photos, and more, and get things done across apps with even more systemwide app actions. Additionally, Siri AI can answer questions related to the content on a user’s screen or go out to the web to get up-to-date information using broad world knowledge and generate a helpful answer. A dedicated Siri app allows users to revisit a past conversation or kick off a new one — all in one place — and uses iCloud to privately sync conversational history across a user’s products.
Apple (MacRumors, MacStories):
Powered by the next generation of Apple Intelligence, Siri AI is a completely reimagined version of Siri that is more helpful, more capable, and more intelligent. With detailed, engaging responses and natural back-and-forth conversation, Siri AI helps users get more done than ever.
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Siri has been rebuilt from the ground up with powerful AI at its core. It takes full advantage of the bold new architecture for Apple Intelligence, including the next generation of Apple Foundation Models that run on device and on servers using Private Cloud Compute. When Private Cloud Compute is handling users’ requests, their personal data is not stored nor made accessible to Apple or anyone else. Outside experts can continue to verify this privacy promise at any time. Additionally, Siri AI uses the system orchestrator to tap into core capabilities like the Spotlight index and App Toolbox, which work entirely on device to keep users in control of their data.
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For products that support Apple’s most advanced on-device model ever, Siri AI offers even more expressive voices, as well as a major boost in accuracy with systemwide dictation. Users have the ability to customize the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s voice so it’s just right for them. Dictation now captures what users say as polished text with greater precision, automatically handling capitalization, punctuation, and formatting as they speak. With improved speech understanding, users can speak naturally and trust that their words will appear clearly, accurately, and as intended.
I remain uninterested in these more advanced Siri features. They matter in that Apple needs to show that they’re not “behind” and that they can actually deliver on what they announce and advertise. But I don’t find the use cases compelling and wouldn’t trust the results.
If you really care about a particular concert, would you believe Siri about how the tickets work and that it will auto-create a reminder at the right time? Why should I believe that it can figure out whether a particular irregularly shaped object can fit inside an irregularly shaped container when said shapes are probably not even published on the Web? Can it really dig into my e-mail to find the right flight info? An answer without being able to see the sources is not useful. And I certainly don’t want it to pick for itself which vacation photos to send out.
I just want the basic features—from a decade or so ago, like music controls, reminders, and access to my purchases—to work quickly, reliably, and offline to the extent possible. I did not hear anything to suggest that this was a focus. Instead, everyone is celebrating how slow the demos were because that proves they weren’t fake.
It’s actually super important that the Siri demo was kind of slow, because it emphasized it was real. Would be even better if it were live, though.
The other interesting thing to note from the keynote: watching the demos, there is ZERO doubt these are real, recorded demonstrations on live devices. There will be no confusion about what is real or fake like there was at WWDC 2024 and the initial attempt at the new Siri.
In fact, I think most of them were single takes of multiple demos back-to-back. That’s the way it should be, even when they feel a little slow.
Who the fuck wears a $4000 VR headset to find out if their boots will fit in their fucking backpack?
THATS the best example they could come up for that feature?
also I wouldn’t trust the answer anyway
These Siri demo’s feel like OpenAI demo’s from a view years ago. However, this is built in to the operating system.
Much like Dropbox vs iCloud, I feel like long term, once it’s good enough Apple will succeed in making AI a “feature” rather than a product.
Apple needed to show that they could make a version of Siri that wasn’t three years behind. They didn’t succeed.
And, if your standards are the state of the art in AI circa June 2024, when Apple took their first crack at answering the question, they did quite well.
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What’s fascinating about this specific demo is that it also showed just how far behind Apple is.
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Still, the bubble was strong enough to convince OpenAI to make the exact same mistake Dropbox did: the company somehow convinced itself that it could make enough money selling subscriptions to consumers; Anthropic, meanwhile, realized that it was enterprises who were willing to pay for AI’s massive productivity benefits, even as OpenAI failed to capitalize on their consumer market penetration by refusing to build an advertising product.
This is a long-winded way of saying that I don’t think that Apple’s agentic shortcomings are a big deal, at least for now. Agents help you do work and be more productive, and consumers don’t want to work or care about being productive. What they do want to do is watch short-form video, and an iPhone is simply much better at that than any other device ever will be; in that context, Siri being good enough is enough, and it appears that Apple crossed that bar.
They need to execute, they need to prove this can scale, and most of all, they need to get third-party apps on board with App Intents and App Schemas. But it seems like they’re doing all of that. This is not a done deal but it is very realistic.
Siri doesn’t have access to the filesystem or tool-calling, so it’s completely unable to do the kinds of tasks you might easily do with Codex or Claude. It’s a good start, but the state of the art has already dramatically shifted over the past year. The question is will Siri move in this direction, or stick to providing answers from the web?
Will Apple introduce its own distinct Codex-style agentic programming model that can do all this, and work with Xcode? You would hope so…
Have new Siri now. Siri still can’t do “turn lamp off and turn plug on” in one command.
The revamped version of Siri that is officially named “Siri AI” will be available to test in the iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27 developer betas starting today, and it is coming to the Apple Watch in a future watchOS 27 beta. “Siri AI” will also be included in the public betas of each platform that are launching in July.
“Siri AI” requires a device that is compatible with Apple Intelligence.
Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi has explained why the company launched a standalone Siri app in iOS 27, after previously characterizing a dedicated chatbot as contrary to its Apple Intelligence strategy.
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“We see Siri not as a separate chatbot, just an unintegrated place you go and chit-chat, but rather as an integral, conversational tool that you use in the moment, deeply integrated into your experience.”
Clear as mud.
ldt:
How to bypass the new Siri waitlist (Mac only)
See also: New Siri Waitlist.
Previously:
- No Siri AI in EU
- WWDC 2026 Keynote
- Delayed Siri Features Settlement
- Gemini-Powered Siri Features Delayed
- How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover
- Apple Shifts Siri From Giannandrea to Rockwell
- Rotten
- Apple Delays “More Personalized Siri” Apple Intelligence Features
- Revamping Siri With iOS 18
1 Comment RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I can relate to: "I just want the basic features—from a decade or so ago, like music controls, reminders, and access to my purchases—to work quickly, reliably, and offline to the extent possible."
I live in a cell phone dead zone and, years on, I foolishly try to get Siri in CarPlay to do something, like a calculation, and am surprised it needs a server for simple arithmetic.
And what really grates is it'll say "try again later." No, _you_ try again later. How about you set a reminder to yourself and try in three minutes when I have service again? I'll be a happy camper if Siri AI can do that.
