Apple is opening up its biggest Siri overhaul ever to a wider audience with the release of iOS 27 public beta, giving regular users the chance to try out the new AI assistant before it launches more widely later this fall.
The public beta marks the first time Apple has made its AI-powered Siri app widely available outside of developers. With about 2.5 billion active devices worldwide, even if only a small portion of users install the public beta, it will still represent the biggest test of Apple’s redesigned AI assistant and its answer to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others.
The Siri AI update, officially announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, turns Apple’s legacy voice assistant into a more capable AI-powered tool that can access information on a user’s device, including emails, photos and messages, as well as respond to what’s on the screen and base its answers on global knowledge, similar to any modern-day AI chatbot.
It is also more integrated across the operating system. It can be accessed by saying “Hey Siri” or by pressing the side button, as before, as well as by swiping down from the Dynamic Island (the black bar at the top of the screen). Plus, it’s built into the iPhone’s built-in search engine tool, Spotlight, making it more powerful than before because it can search for answers to almost any question.
For the first time, Siri has also been given its own standalone app, a user experience that may be preferred by people who are comfortable with chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini. However, since Siri is so integrated throughout the iPhone, accessing it via an app seems somewhat unnecessary.
In addition to iOS 27 on iPhone, the upgraded Siri is available across all other Apple products, including iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, CarPlay, AirPods, Apple TV, and Vision Pro.
Under the hood, Siri AI powers Apple’s intelligence, including new Apple intelligence Incorporation forms That runs on the device and uses its cloud computing. Apple built its core models in collaboration with Google and its own Gemini model, but these models aren’t just a modified version of the Gemini. Instead, Apple’s models are designed specifically for Apple Silicon using proprietary data distilled Google’s Gemini – A process that uses Gemini to create smaller, highly efficient models built into iOS and other Apple software. Meanwhile, Private Cloud Compute ensures that users’ personal data is not stored or accessed by Apple.
In early tests of the developer version of Siri AI, the assistant was able to better handle basic tasks on the phone, like finding specific photos in your photo library, summarizing group texts, adding a text-sent appointment to your calendar, and looking up nutritional information about what’s in your camera view. It was also better at answering questions you’d normally have to search the web for, like when an upcoming local event is happening, or what’s happening in the news.
In developer beta, Siri sometimes sends error messages or gets confused. (For example, I once asked Siri for the latest news about Iran, and it searched my contacts for someone with that name.)
However, it’s easy to see Siri becoming a bigger part of your daily digital life, especially because it doesn’t require you to open an app to use it.
Overall, this year’s developer betas have been fairly stable, which makes recommending a public beta much easier this time around. Of course, beta installation should always be approached with caution; If your device is supposed to run very smoothly and never encounter any errors, you may want to hold off until the general launch of iOS 27, which is expected to be in September.
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