Siri AI is the Apple Voice Assistant Revamp We've All Been Waiting For

New Siri is finally here. At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, the company lifted the lid on an Apple Intelligence update that unlocks a new Siri experience across its different platforms.

Apple's refreshed voice assistant will henceforth be known as Siri AI. It will come with its own app, a fresh design, Visual Intelligence and a slew of new customization options for picking a voice. At first, it will be available only in English, but more languages are set to be added later.

"Siri is now a profoundly more capable assistant that helps you find what you need and gets more done," said Mike Rockwell, who was formerly the company's Vision Pro chief but has more recently led the effort to bring Siri up to scratch for the AI era. "It's also more conversational, so you can go back and forth like never before, and get detailed, engaging answers."

This Siri revamp is actually take two for Apple. The company first announced Siri 2.0 back in 2024 alongside the launch of Apple Intelligence. But this new version of the voice assistant, imbued with AI, suffered delay after delay. Just last month, Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle several legal complaints alleging that it misled people about the iPhone's AI capabilities.

It's no surprise that the revamped Siri has finally arrived just at the moment of Tim Cook's last WWDC as CEO of Apple. Unveiling the original Siri back in 2011 was one of the first things Cook did when he stepped into the top role. It makes perfect sense that he'd want the long-promised upgrade to Siri to see the light of day before his departure, and close out his tenure by closing what would otherwise be an unfinished chapter.

"Apple had to address its shortcomings in AI, and WWDC provided some answers," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. "The company must now prove that its privacy-led, integration-first approach can translate into a meaningfully better everyday experience, not just parity with rivals."

What can Siri AI do?

Siri AI is available across different Apple devices and services, from iOS to CarPlay to AirPods. You can activate just as you do now -- by saying, "Hey, Siri" -- and also by dragging your finger down from your iPhone's dynamic island or waking it via Spotlight on your Mac or iPad. The experience, Apple promises, will be richer and deeper, with better conversational abilities.

Not only will Siri understand your personal context, but it will also complete app actions on your behalf, while being aware of what's on your screen, thanks to Apple's Visual Intelligence. Meanwhile, the dedicated app will work across all platforms, serving as a memory keeper for previous conversations you've had with Siri and making it easy to refer back to them.

In a demo during the WWDC keynote, Rockwell showed how it was possible to ask Siri about upcoming concerts, including finding out how to secure tickets and setting a reminder, all using voice. He also showed how it was possible to ask Siri to identify a place from a photograph and see if his friend, who had sent him his new address, lived nearby, without having to manually find the message and search.

Siri AI can also do things entirely personal to you. It's capable of identifying your friends and family members in photos by name, and can create an album featuring a specific cast of characters determined by you, in which it will gather all pictures featuring them together. It can reach into your messages, emails and other apps upon your request to surface nuggets of information that would otherwise be time-consuming to find.

Additional features include more accurate dictation, which will allow you to be more confident sending messages using only your voice, and integrated writing tools that can draft documents or emails in a way that reflects your personal style. It also has what Apple is calling "broad world knowledge," which means it can get you detailed information on any topic or in-depth answers to any questions you might have.

This is very much the Siri that Apple first hinted at two years ago, but this time fully realized. But the real test -- whether it meets the expectations of people dreaming of a true digital personal assistant -- is still to come.

"Apple still needs to prove that Siri and its wider AI capabilities can move from promise to everyday utility," said Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight. "The challenge is not just to show technical progress, but to make AI feel invisible in the background and valuable in the moments that matter."

Apple has also taken steps to ensure Siri remains the world's "most private digital assistant," according to its press release. Some of Apple's Foundational Models run on your device, but when you chat with Siri, and your request is handled by servers using Private Cloud Compute, your personal data isn't being stored and won't be available to anyone, including people at Apple.

When is Siri AI available?

For developers, Siri AI is available to play with from today across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, MacOS 27 and VisionOS 27. Siri AI will be available for developer testing in a future WatchOS 27 beta.

For the full Siri AI experience, you'll have to wait until later this year -- probably when the next iPhone is available, although it could be later -- and ensure that your device is set to English.

In China, Siri AI will not be available at all while Apple works through regulatory hurdles. In Europe, things are a little more complicated.

Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro users in the EU will be able to tap into Siri AI when their device is set to a supported language (English, in the first instance). But Siri AI will no initially be available to EU users on iPhone or iPad. "Apple is working hard to find a path forward that preserves its users' privacy and security," the company said in a press release.