Apple Rebrands Assistant as Siri AI in iOS 27, With On-Device Indexing

Apple is renaming its iPhone assistant Siri AI and rebuilding it around on-device processing when iOS 27 ships, according to a WIRED rundown of the new capabilities. The revamp keeps the "Hey Siri" wake phrase but changes what the assistant can reach: instead of answering from general knowledge, it indexes the contents of the phone itself.

Siri first appeared on the iPhone in 2011, five years before Google Assistant and 11 years before ChatGPT opened to the public. WIRED reports that despite that head start, Apple's voice AI has been "comprehensively overtaken" by generative AI rivals and now looks "rather primitive" by comparison. iOS 27 is Apple's attempt to close that gap.

The hardware requirement is the first thing users will notice. Siri AI runs only on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or later models, a list WIRED says includes the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo. Older handsets lack the on-board silicon needed for the higher AI processing demands, so the upgrade is gated by chip generation rather than by iOS version alone.

The personal-context feature is the centerpiece. On arrival, Siri AI spends time indexing everything stored on the device, including texts, emails, and calendars, so it can answer natural-language questions about the user's own data. WIRED's examples include asking what day a work appraisal is happening or where the user said they would meet their mother. The indexing stays on-device, and WIRED reports nothing is sent back to Apple. The same retrieval works inside the Photos app, where conversational prompts can pull up pictures of a pet, images from a past vacation, or a collection of tree photos.

Siri AI also gains screen awareness. Previously, asking about something on screen required taking a screenshot and handing it to Siri. Now the assistant can read what is displayed directly. In Safari, a user can ask Siri AI to summarize on-screen text or identify a landmark in an article image. It can explain options in Settings or pull up details about a game in the App Store. The Camera app adds a Siri mode, selected next to the shutter button, that answers questions about whatever is in view, such as the nutritional information for a menu item.

Text generation changes too. The older Siri could write text, but it handed the job to an integrated ChatGPT plug-in. WIRED reports that Siri AI needs no third-party help for tasks like drafting messages and emails, and that the feature is invoked by saying "Hey Siri" or tapping a Write control. The source excerpt ends mid-sentence at that point, so the full list of writing and editing capabilities is not available here.

What remains unclear is the release date for iOS 27, which WIRED does not give, and whether the on-device indexing has any storage or battery cost beyond the initial pass. The article also does not say whether Siri AI replaces the ChatGPT integration entirely or supplements it. Apple has not confirmed the details beyond what the report describes.