Apple ships AI-rebuilt Siri to hundreds of millions of iPhones

Apple began shipping the most significant rebuild of Siri in the assistant's 15-year history on September 14, distributing it to iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and Apple Vision Pro headsets as part of iOS 27 and its companion operating systems. The rollout, confirmed in an Apple newsroom announcement marking the release, covers every device that qualifies for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27 and tvOS 27 — a base Apple has long put at several hundred million active devices, most of them iPhones.

What changed, and how it's rolling out

Branded "Siri AI," the assistant now splits work between two systems. Straightforward requests run entirely on the device, using what Apple describes in its own release introducing the new assistant as "Apple's most powerful on-device model ever," called AFM Core Advanced. Heavier queries are handed off to Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers, which now run a custom Gemini model built jointly with Google, reported at roughly 1.2 trillion parameters. The new Siri can draw on personal context across Mail, Messages, Notes and Photos, understand what is on screen, and carry out multi-step actions inside and across apps.

Siri AI launches first as an English-language beta, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish support following in October. It is not yet available in the European Union, a restriction Apple has tied to the bloc's Digital Markets Act, or in mainland China, where the company says the feature remains under regulatory review. Eligible hardware starts at the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Early reviews, cited in early coverage of the release, are warmer than past Siri launches but not uniformly positive, with testers praising more reliable personal-context search while others say the assistant still trails dedicated chatbot rivals.