Overview
- Apple tore Siri down and rebuilt it for iOS 27 to create a natively multimodal assistant with its own Siri app and deeper system integration.
- Developer betas for iOS 27 are available and reporters on the Siri AI waitlist are seeing concrete features, but Siri AI remains labeled a beta, gated by a waitlist and early bugs.
- Visual Intelligence now lives in the Camera app as a Siri Mode that can identify items, give nutritional info, split bills in the U.S., import events and create Wallet passes.
- Siri AI requires newer hardware on many devices, must index on-device data before use, and will roll out by device, language and region with a public beta planned next month and full release expected in September.
- Apple is offering developers free access to its foundation models until an app reaches 2 million first-time downloads and is using a hybrid privacy approach that routes heavy inference to private cloud partners, a move developers praised but flagged for unclear post-threshold terms.