Apple opens Siri AI to the public in the iOS 27 beta — but switches it off in the EU
Apple's rebuilt, chatbot-style Siri AI became testable by any public beta user on 14 July as part of iOS 27, running on-device Foundation Models and Private Cloud Compute to answer questions, read on-screen content, and act across apps — a real shift in how iPhone users will discover and trigger app features, though EU users are locked out for now.
16 July 2026
Apple pushed its long-awaited Siri overhaul into the public beta on 14 July, ahead of iOS 27’s expected general release in September. The new Siri AI is Apple’s direct answer to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude: it uses on-device Foundation Models plus Private Cloud Compute to hold a real conversation, see what’s on your screen, pull context from your own emails, messages and photos, and take actions inside and across apps rather than just answering questions. It’s rolled out across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, CarPlay, AirPods, Apple TV and Vision Pro in one go — and it’s explicitly not available in the EU yet, a regulatory gap worth watching if you’re planning for a European user base.
The developer-facing detail is the “act across apps” part. Siri AI works by understanding what’s on screen and what an app exposes through Apple’s App Intents framework — the same mechanism that’s been quietly maturing since iOS 18. An app that hasn’t wired up App Intents properly is effectively invisible to the new Siri, the same way a page with no structured markup is invisible to a search engine’s rich results. That’s a new, low-visibility category of “app SEO” that most teams commissioning an iOS build in 2026 haven’t thought about yet.
So what
If you’re planning an iOS build that will still be current in six months, App Intents support isn’t an optional nice-to-have anymore — it’s how a meaningful share of iPhone users are going to find and trigger your app’s core actions once Siri AI ships generally in September. It’s also worth budgeting for two different experiences if you have EU users, since Apple Intelligence features are gated there for now. Our iOS & Android work builds this kind of platform-native integration in from the start rather than bolting it on later — get in touch if you’re scoping a build and want it done right the first time.