Wired tests Apple’s new Siri AI in iOS 27 developer beta

In short: Wired tested Apple’s new Siri AI in an early iOS 27 version and found it more helpful and more personal than the old Siri, but still imperfect.

What happened

A Wired writer spent a day in San Francisco using a developer beta (an early test version) of Apple’s redesigned Siri AI on an iPhone. Apple plans to release the new Siri to the public later this year as part of iOS 27.

The new Siri is built into more places on the iPhone, including the search bar. It also keeps a history of your back-and-forth chats in a dedicated app. The writer said Siri’s answers were usually short and easy to scan, instead of long, rambling responses.

Apple says Siri can be “personalized,” meaning it can use information on your phone, like messages, photos, and emails, to respond. In the test, Siri suggested activities based on recent conversations and helped find specific photos, like pictures from a trip to Costa Rica. It also handled practical tasks, like opening the camera for a timed selfie and drafting a message to send in different apps.

The story also notes limits. Siri sometimes misunderstood context, like identifying trees in a photo but referencing a location about an hour away. It also made small errors when sending a text, like inserting the words “with a” before an emoji and once suggesting the wrong recipient.

Why it matters

Apple is trying to make Siri feel less like a basic voice command tool and more like a helpful assistant that can look across your phone, like a librarian who can quickly find what you already have. That could save time, but it also raises privacy questions, since Siri needs to scan and organize your on-device data. Apple points to its “Private Cloud Compute” approach and says users can turn Siri AI off.

Source: Wired