Siri AI Hands On: A Smart, Helpful Assistant

I quickly found that Siri AI’s bite-sized replies don’t drone on endlessly like many contemporary AI assistants, often sticking to a single paragraph. When I verbally asked for a nice beach hike route to see the sunrise near the Golden Gate Bridge, it succinctly recommended a popular trail in the Presidio neighborhood as well as an option in the Marin Headlands. Siri bolded key words in the text answer that appeared alongside the audible response for easy scanning. Since I wanted more info before heading out, I swiped down on the text answer to read additional details about each option.

Apple’s partnership with Google is a core driver behind this Siri overhaul. Google’s Gemini now helps power the voice assistant’s underlying model, Apple Intelligence. Siri’s output with this new model felt more attuned to what I was looking for, rather than just suggesting a couple of website links for me to dig through. When I asked generic questions, like “What should I do today,” Siri combed through my recent messages and highlighted recent plans I started discussing with friends but never finalized.

Another key aspect of Siri AI is hyper-personalization based on what you have on your device, whether that data is in your photos or messages. It also doesn’t keep you locked into Apple-only services; when I asked Siri to draft a text, the voice assistant confirmed if I wanted to send it through Apple’s Messages or Meta’s Messenger service.

This style of AI search requires Siri to index your phone, which means scanning and cataloging its data for easy reference. When I updated my iPhone to the developer beta for iOS 27, it took a little over a week for the device to fully index.

At WWDC 2026, Apple repeatedly referenced its privacy-preserving approach to Siri AI. As part of the company’s Private Cloud Compute, Apple claims it doesn’t store data from users and only pulls from it when you ask Siri a question. Similar to the previous version of Apple’s assistant, users who aren’t interested can turn off Siri AI in their settings.

I tested Siri AI on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which will have many but not all of Siri AI’s features. Based on what’s been publicly released, only the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and the iPhone 17 Max will have all the fixings, like more varied voice options. As for the rest of the lineup: Every iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 model will be able to run the new Siri, while only the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will be compatible. Older models will not support this voice assistant.

Siri, Let’s Take a Hike

Like any good tourist, I started my morning off with a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge, where there are plenty of nearby hiking trails to wander around and soak up the views. Since Siri AI is also integrated with the iPhone’s camera app, I decided to open it up and snap a quick photo of the foggy path ahead of me to see how Siri would respond.

I didn’t ask Siri any questions; I just showed it a snapshot of what I saw at the moment, and the AI tool responded with a short history of the Cypress Tree Tunnel located at Point Reyes National Seashore. Siri was right to clock the Monterey cypress trees. But the tunnel it referenced is an hour drive from where I was, potentially confusing for someone not familiar with the area.

Despite this apparent flub, the more I chatted with Siri while walking around, the more impressed I was at other functions, like helping uncover images from past adventures hidden among the thousands of photos in my camera roll.