Will your phone be getting the upgrade?
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.
