Apple has launched a significant update to Siri as part of iOS 27, integrating advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that represent the company's most substantial overhaul of its voice assistant to date. The announcement came at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, where the tech giant showcased its renewed commitment to competitive AI development.
The revamped Siri, now branded as "Siri AI," has been fundamentally rebuilt with generative AI at its core. Rather than functioning as a traditional question-and-answer tool, the new assistant more closely resembles AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Mike Rockwell, Apple's vice-president of Siri engineering, demonstrated the tool's enhanced capabilities, including improved conversational abilities and integration across Apple's native app ecosystem.
The updated Siri will operate as a dedicated app available on both mobile devices and laptops. It can now assist with daily planning, information retrieval, directions, proofreading, shopping, calendar management, and image-based tasks like extracting nutrition information from photos. During a demonstration, Rockwell showed how Siri could identify a beach location from a photo, retrieve a friend's address, and provide directions with a planned stop, all within a single interface rather than jumping between multiple apps.
Notably, Siri's transformation is powered by Google's Gemini AI model through a billion-dollar partnership between the two companies. This collaboration reflects Apple's broader strategy shift as it works to catch up with competitors who have aggressively pursued AI development over the past decade. The initial release will be available only in English.
According to Dipanjan Chatterjee, a principal analyst at Forrester, "A fundamentally re-architected Siri inside iOS 27 with a little help from Google's Gemini would represent more than an update – it would signal Apple's readiness to make AI the primary interface layer across its ecosystem."
The update arrives as Apple addresses longstanding criticisms of Siri's capabilities. The company has repeatedly postponed previous versions of the assistant, first announced in 2024. In May, Apple settled a 250 million dollar class-action lawsuit alleging the company falsely advertised Siri's AI capabilities, with some consumers receiving payouts up to 95 dollars.
Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice-president of software engineering, acknowledged the company's previous hesitation regarding AI, stating that some competitors appear "to be racing forward, seemingly pursuing AI for the sake of AI, without clear regard for the people that it ultimately meant to serve."
The launch of Siri AI represents a critical moment for Apple as it positions itself in the increasingly competitive artificial intelligence market while maintaining its emphasis on privacy protections and on-device processing for many requests.