Apple’s new assistant, renamed Siri AI, is not a simple update of Cupertino’s old voice assistant, but a completely “revised and corrected” system, built on the Apple Intelligence platform, capable of understanding the user’s personal context, reading what appears on the screen and drawing on the Web in real time to offer truly useful answers.
Siri AI will arrive on iOS 27 in a beta version next month in the USA and not in Europe for the moment due to the Digital Markets Act. The assistant can rummage through emails, messages and photos, connect information scattered across different apps and perform actions involving multiple services at the same time. Do you need to recover the confirmation number of a reservation buried in an old email? Find the restaurant that a friend recommended to you in chat? Looking for photos from a trip with a specific person? Just ask Siri using natural language and the assistant, using Apple Intelligence, will allow you to find what you need. This understanding of personal context extends to third-party apps as well, as long as developers integrate it with Spotlight. The result is an assistant that knows where to look, even when the user doesn’t remember where what is.
The main innovations of Siri AI
One of the most interesting new features is the ability to detect content on the screen. If you receive a message to organize a dinner, you can ask Siri what to bring, discuss with the assistant and then directly save the recipe in Notes. The assistant correctly interprets what he has read and acts accordingly.
On the action front, Siri AI can now create emails from scratch, edit and share images, search for up-to-date information online, and carry on rich conversations with follow-up questions. More than an assistant, Siri AI is a kind of collaborator.
The integration extends across the entire Apple ecosystem. On iPhone it is activated by voice, with a long press on the side button or by swiping down from the Dynamic Island and so you can easily start an in-depth conversation. On Mac and iPad it’s in Spotlight and in the system context menus, where a right click is enough to ask for information about images, files or text on the screen. On Apple Vision Pro it becomes a three-dimensional element in space, which can be activated by looking. Even on the move, Siri AI is available on Apple Watch, CarPlay and AirPods.
Under the hood, Siri AI relies on a new generation of Foundation Models, with hybrid processing: part on the device, part in the cloud via Private Cloud Compute, Apple’s infrastructure designed to handle the most complex operations without ever retaining personal data. Guarantees that, according to Apple, can be verified by independent experts.
A new dedicated Siri app is also arriving, which synchronizes conversation history via iCloud: you can start on iPhone and continue on Mac without losing the thread of the conversation. Voice dictation also improves, with automatic management of capitalization, punctuation and formatting, and voice customization, with new options for rhythm and expressiveness. These advanced features will, however, only be available on the most recent Apple devices: iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, iPad with M4 chip or later (with at least 12 GB of unified memory) and Mac with M3 chip or later (with at least 12 GB of unified memory).
The expansion of Visual Intelligence to iPad, Mac and Vision Pro completes the picture. On iPhone it is already inside the camera, with a dedicated mode that allows Siri to analyze what is framed. To top it all off, advanced writing tools that generate drafts, rewrite texts and automatically adapt tone and punctuation based on how you usually communicate with each recipient. Siri now also corrects texts in real time as you type anything, practically anywhere in the operating system, including third-party apps.
Siri AI will not arrive in the EU
The new Siri AI features are already accessible to developers and will arrive in public beta within the next month. Then, in autumn, all users with a compatible Apple device will be able to benefit from the new Siri functions. However, it is worth pointing out an important limitation for those in Europe: due to the Digital Markets Act, Siri AI will not initially be available in the EU, not for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 at least. European users will in fact only be able to access it on Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro, by setting the device to a supported language (Italian is among these). Apple said it is working to find a solution that protects user privacy and security.
For compatible devices, Siri AI will be integrated into iPhone 16 and later, iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max and later, iPad mini (A17 Pro), MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), iPad with M1 or later, Mac with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3 when paired with a nearby Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone.
