Siri has never been the smartest virtual assistant, but what is especially disappointing is how it has refused to evolve despite Apple's aggressive push for Apple Intelligence. Two major versions of iOS have come and gone without the supercharged Siri that Apple originally promised. Apple finally announced an improved version of Siri in its WWDC 2026 keynote, and it would appear that the virtual assistant is finally living up to the expectations the company set years ago. We went hands-on with Siri AI and found it to be actually useful in answering complex queries and carrying out chained commands.
Only devices compatible with Apple Intelligence will be receiving Siri AI later this year. This includes every iPhone released since the iPhone 15 Pro, alongside iPad and Mac models powered by Apple silicon. The 2024 iPad mini is also supported since it uses the same SoC as the iPhone 15 Pro. Launch the Settings app, scroll down a bit, and if you spot the Apple Intelligence & Siri section, your iPhone is on track to receive the AI-powered Siri upgrade when the stable release of iOS 27 rolls out this fall.
Interestingly enough, Apple says the new assistant will initially be released as a beta. Users will likely need to manually opt in to access Siri AI, much like those testing the iOS 27 developer beta had to hop on a waitlist. Fortunately, compatibility with iOS 27 should not be a cause of concern, given how Apple is extending support all the way back to the iPhone 11.
Newer iPhones get a more customizable Siri AI
Siri is now better equipped to handle personal requests — it understands context and can reference information from your notes, messages, emails and photos. It is powered by newer Apple Foundation Models that are stored on-device, which should help with both response times and privacy. More complex prompts are offloaded to the bigger models stored on the cloud through Private Cloud Compute, which Apple claims ensures your data is inaccessible to anyone else besides you.
If you own an iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max or the iPhone Air, Siri AI will be able to take advantage of an even more powerful on-device model. This should improve the overall experience, but more importantly, it enables expressive voices for Siri, improved speech recognition and more accurate dictation.
The upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and rumored iPhone Fold will also enjoy powerful on-device AI models, but it's uncertain if the base model iPhone 18 will too. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is looking to bump up the memory in the non-Pro iPhones to 9GB. However, Apple mentions that its most powerful on-device AI models require at least 12GB of RAM.
We must admit, much of the Apple Intelligence suite so far has been sloppy AI features that don't meaningfully improve the iPhone experience. Siri AI seems to be genuinely useful, though. Even on the beta builds we've tried, the virtual assistant has been fast and accurate.
Background: Siri's long road to AI-powered assistance
The journey to a truly intelligent Siri has been filled with delays and unmet promises. When Apple first introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, it showcased a dramatically enhanced Siri capable of on-screen awareness, deep app integration, and personal context understanding. Yet those features failed to ship on schedule, leading to frustration among developers and users alike. Over the following two years, incremental improvements like summarized notifications and image generation tools rolled out, but the core assistant remained largely unchanged.
Apple's cautious approach likely stems from its emphasis on privacy and on-device processing. Unlike competitors that rely heavily on cloud-based AI, Apple has invested in building powerful neural processing units (NPUs) within its chips. The A17 Pro, introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro, was the first to include a 16-core Neural Engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second. This hardware lays the groundwork for running large language models locally, which is essential for Siri AI's responsiveness and data security.
Nevertheless, the gap between Apple's vision and reality has been wide. Third-party assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa have long offered contextual conversations and routine automation. With the rise of generative AI, platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini have set new standards for conversational fluency. Apple's Siri AI aims to close that gap by leveraging its own foundation models, fine-tuned for the specific constraints of mobile devices.
Hardware requirements explained
The reason not all iPhones will get Siri AI boils down to memory and processing power. Apple Intelligence requires at least 8GB of RAM for basic features like text summarization and image editing. For the more demanding Siri AI, especially the advanced on-device models used in Pro iPhones, the RAM requirement jumps to 12GB. This explains why the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max (both with 8GB RAM) support the base Siri AI but not the enhanced Pro features. The iPhone 16 series, also with 8GB RAM, falls into the same category.
Looking ahead, the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max are expected to feature 12GB of RAM, enabling the full suite of Siri AI capabilities. The upcoming iPhone Air, a rumored ultra-thin model, is also likely to pack 12GB of RAM to differentiate itself. For the iPhone 18 generation, Apple may bring 12GB RAM to Pro models while offering 9GB on standard units, a move that could create a tiered experience for Siri AI. The iPhone Fold, if it materializes, would probably join the Pro tier with at least 12GB.
It's worth noting that older iPads and Macs with Apple silicon (M1 and later) already have sufficient memory for Siri AI. The M1 iPad Pro started with 8GB or 16GB, and new M4 models offer even more. This disparity between iPhone and iPad memory has led to speculation that future iPhones may see a larger baseline jump in RAM to unify the experience across platforms.
What Siri AI can do now
In our testing of the iOS 27 developer beta, Siri AI demonstrated impressive leaps in natural language understanding. It can chain multiple commands in a single utterance, such as “Find the recipe for chocolate cake from my notes, set a timer for 30 minutes, and send a message to Sarah saying I'll bake it tomorrow.” The assistant correctly parsed each action and executed them in sequence, a task that would have required three separate inputs with the old Siri.
Another standout feature is on-screen awareness. If you're reading an email about an event, you can ask Siri to “add this to my calendar” without specifying the date or time — the assistant reads the screen and extracts the relevant details. This works across Apple's own apps and some third-party ones, though developer adoption is still limited. Personal context is also improved: Siri can reference information from your messages, notes, and photos to answer questions like “What did my mom say about the party last week?” or “Show me the photo I took of the Golden Gate Bridge last June.”
These capabilities rely heavily on the on-device model, which updates as Apple refines its foundation models. The cloud-based fallback handles queries that require broader knowledge, such as “What's the capital of Mongolia?” or “Compare the battery life of iPhone 17 Pro and Galaxy S26.” Apple's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure ensures that even cloud-processed data remains anonymous and encrypted.
Exclusive Pro features and future enhancements
Beyond the base Siri AI, owners of iPhone 17 Pro and newer (or any device with 12GB+ RAM) will gain access to expressive voices with a wider emotional range, improved speech recognition in noisy environments, and more accurate real-time dictation. Apple has demonstrated a Siri voice that can adjust its tone based on the context — sounding cheerful when reading a message from a friend but more formal when summarizing a business email.
These enhancements are possible because the larger on-device model can allocate more parameters to prosody and accent detection. For users with accents or speech impairments, the higher memory capacity allows for more sophisticated adaptation algorithms. Apple has been working with speech pathologists to ensure the assistant can understand non-standard speech patterns, a feature that could be life-changing for many.
There are also hints of future capabilities like proactive suggestions based on daily routines, integration with health data (e.g., “How many steps did I take today?”), and even the ability to control smart home devices with more nuanced commands. Apple is reportedly developing a Siri SDK that would let third-party app developers access limited on-device AI features, opening the door for voice-controlled app workflows.
However, the company remains tight-lipped about whether the base iPhone 18 (if it has 9GB RAM) will get any of these Pro features. The 3GB difference might seem small, but for large language models running locally, it can mean the difference between a 7B parameter model and a 13B parameter model. For now, Apple's strategy appears to reserve the best Siri AI experience for its most expensive devices — a pattern that has drawn criticism from consumers who expect parity within a generation.
Despite the exclusivity, the arrival of Siri AI marks a turning point for Apple's assistant. After years of playing catch-up, the company is finally delivering an experience that feels genuinely intelligent. Whether it will be enough to sway users away from Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa remains to be seen, but for the millions of iPhone owners with compatible hardware, the fall update promises to make Siri not just useful, but indispensable.
Source:Engadget News