Apple has released iOS 27 for iPhone, and the headline feature is the rebuilt Siri. What trips most people up is that installing the update does not install the new assistant. Siri AI is opt-in, it sits behind a waitlist, and until you join that queue your iPhone keeps talking to the same Siri you have had for years. The whole entry point is three taps deep: Settings, then Siri, then Try Siri AI (Beta).
There is also an age gate: Siri AI is not available to users under 13. So does asking what time you need to leave to pick someone up, if the details are sitting in an email Two features need Apple’s newest on-device model, AFM Core Advanced, which narrows them to iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo. Live Rewind and Siri Recap arrive in beta in late 2026 and need an Apple Intelligence iPhone 16 or later, excluding the iPhone 16e.
Apple has confirmed that expanded access to these features will be sold for a fee in future.
Apple has said French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish arrive next month. “Find photos from my trip to Lisbon” works. Audio processing happens inside Secure Exclave, a hardware-isolated compartment on the S11 chip that deletes the raw audio immediately, and Apple says no recordings are created or stored. Apple says those limits shift with the feature, the complexity of the request, system demand and its own policies, so there is no fixed number to plan around. It has not said what that fee will be, when it starts, or whether the free tier stays where it is once it does.
Your device language and Siri language both need to be set to a supported language, and English is the only one Siri AI speaks at launch. The regional split matters if you travel. EU residents cannot get Siri AI on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, and features that depend on it are switched off there too. Once you have turned Siri AI on, though, it keeps working when you travel to other regions. The feature list is long, but most of it comes back to context. Here is what the new assistant adds: Personal context: search across your messages, mail, photos, calendar and notes by describing what you want. The first is expressive voices, where you adjust pace and expressiveness until Siri sounds right. The second is the rebuilt dictation, which now handles capitalisation, punctuation and formatting as you speak instead of leaving you to clean it up afterwards. Each feature is opt-in, and Siri Recap can be switched on or off from Control Center. One thing to keep in mind before you join the queue. Features that lean on server-side models, Siri AI included, carry daily usage limits. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
The sequence is short: Update your iPhone to iOS 27 Open Settings and tap Siri Tap Try Siri AI (Beta). Apple Intelligence hardware requirements carry straight over, so the cut-off is sharp: iPhone: iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone Air, and all iPhone 16 models or later, on iOS 27 iPad: iPad mini (A17 Pro) and iPad models with M1 or later, on iPadOS 27 Apple Watch: Series 9 or later, Ultra 2 or later, and SE 3, paired with a nearby Apple Intelligence iPhone Onscreen awareness: ask about an image, a PDF or a webpage you are looking at, then act on it. The better option is Siri Classic, the pre-iOS 27 assistant without the AI layer. Audio Intelligence needs an Apple Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 and covers Live Rewind, which replays the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text on a double press of the Digital Crown, plus Siri Recap for high-level conversation summaries, Sound Recognition and faster Shazam.
Some users are through in minutes, others have reported hours.
Alongside “Hey Siri” and the side button, you can swipe down from the Dynamic Island to start a conversation and get a longer answer. Under all this sits a new generation of Apple Foundation Models, which Apple says were custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models. What clears the queue is a different assistant altogether. Siri AI reads personal context across Messages, Mail, Photos, Calendar, Notes and Reminders, answers questions about whatever is on your screen, pulls current information off the web, takes actions inside apps, and lives in a dedicated Siri app that syncs your conversation history over iCloud. It is in beta, Englis h only for now, and subject to daily usage limits. India is on the list. EU users on iOS are not, and neither is mainland China. If Siri is switched off entirely, tap Turn On Siri first Follow the onscreen steps: pick a voice, complete voice enrollment, review your privacy settings That last screen puts you on the waitlist. Siri AI downloads automatically once your turn comes, and your iPhone notifies you when it does. Wait times vary a lot. One detail catches out early adopters. The old opt-in does not carry over. Once you are approved, a new Siri app appears on your home screen, which is how you will know it has landed. Apple’s example is pulling a team’s home fixtures off a website and dropping them into your calendar Broad world knowledge: open-ended questions now go out to the web for current answers instead of returning a search page App actions: Siri can draft and send messages, create events, edit photos and resume podcasts. Third-party support already covers apps like WhatsApp and Audible, with Microsoft Outlook, Notability and Tripsy listed as coming Write with Siri: generate a draft from scratch, edit what you have written, or ask for feedback, in most places you type. In Mail and Messages it tries to match how you usually write to that specific person Siri mode in Camera: open Camera and tap Siri, or click and hold the Camera Control while the iPhone is locked, then point and ask. Visual Intelligence handles the rest, including turning a loyalty card into a Wallet pass or splitting a bill The Siri app: conversations sync over iCloud, so you can start on iPhone and pick up on iPad or Apple Watch Invoking it has changed too. Any response can be extended into a back-and-forth with follow-up questions, which is the part that most separates this from the old assistant. Requests run on device and on Private Cloud Compute servers, and Apple maintains that personal data handled by Private Cloud Compute is neither stored nor made accessible to anyone, including Apple. If Siri AI is not for you, the exit is in the same menu: Settings, then Siri Tap Turn Off Siri near the bottom Confirm in the pop-up That confirmation is a full-screen sheet that lists everything you lose, and it asks twice. Doing this leaves you with no Siri at all, which is not what most people want. You cannot jump to it directly. Turn Siri AI off first, then: Settings, then Siri Tap Turn On Siri Tap Use Siri Classic Tap Continue Changing your mind later is easy enough. Settings, Siri, Try Siri AI (Beta), Continue puts you back on the new assistant. Siri AI is one part of a broader update. Photos gains Spatial Reframing, an Extend tool and a stronger Clean Up. Image Playground can now produce photorealistic images, with SynthID watermarking due in a later software update. Safari groups tabs into topics and can watch a page for restocks or price drops through Notify Me. Shortcuts builds automations from a plain description, Calendar edits events the same way, Smart Reply in Mail and Messages draws on how you write, and Call Context surfaces things like confirmation codes while you are on the phone to a business. A few smaller ones are easy to miss. Apple Intelligence now proofreads as you type across the system, including inside most third-party apps. The Home app bundles related notifications into a single activity and lets you search video clips by describing what happened in them. The Apple Watch features are pending.
If you had Apple Intelligence switched on before the update, you still have to join the waitlist.