Siri has changed considerably with iOS 27. Apple’s new Siri AI can understand personal context, see what is on your iPhone screen, search across your apps and answer much broader questions than Siri could before.
That means there are now requests you can make that would have been difficult or simply impossible with the previous version of Siri. Instead of asking for a timer or the weather, Siri can find information buried in your email, understand what you are looking at, write something in your own style and carry a request from one app into another.
Siri AI is still in beta and requires an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone. Availability also varies by language and region, but if you have access, these are some of the new things worth actually trying.
1. “What time should I leave to pick them up?”
Siri can now use personal context from information across your iPhone rather than requiring you to supply every detail in the question.
For example, Apple suggests asking Siri what time you should leave to pick somebody up. Siri can look for details such as their flight itinerary in Mail or Calendar and use that information to answer the question. You no longer necessarily need to remember the flight number, airline or arrival time yourself.
2. “Find the photos from my trip to Lisbon”
Siri can search your personal information much more naturally. You can ask it to find particular photos from years ago, locate a recommendation somebody sent you in Messages, or retrieve information buried inside an email.
The important difference is context. Instead of knowing the exact filename, date or search term, you can describe what you remember and let Siri work out what you mean.
3. “What is this and how do I make it?”
One of Siri AI’s biggest additions is onscreen awareness. Siri can understand what you are currently looking at and answer questions about it without you first explaining what is on the screen.
If somebody sends you a photo of a dish, for example, you can ask Siri what it is and how to make it. Siri can provide a recipe and you can follow up by asking it to add the ingredients to your shopping list.
The same feature works with documents and other onscreen content. Apple gives the example of opening class notes containing a diagram and asking Siri to explain it. You can even select two reports in Files and ask which one grew faster.
4. “Plan a menu for my watch party on Saturday”
Siri is no longer limited to short factual responses and simple commands. With broad world knowledge and personal context, it can put together more involved answers and then act on them.
Apple demonstrates this by asking Siri to plan a menu for an upcoming watch party. Once Siri has produced the menu, you can make a follow-up request such as sending it to a group chat.
That ability to continue from the previous request is a major part of Siri AI. You do not have to start from scratch and explain the context again every time.
5. “Write a three-day itinerary for New York”
With Write with Siri, you can ask Siri to create text from scratch virtually anywhere you can type.
That could be an itinerary, email, message, note or something more specific. You can then ask Siri to shorten it, change the tone, rewrite part of it or give feedback on what you have written.
Mail and Messages go a step further. Siri can adapt its writing based on how you normally communicate with a particular person, including the phrases, punctuation and tone you tend to use with them.
6. “How does this email sound?”
Siri can now act more like an editor. If you have written an email, message or other piece of text, you can ask Siri for feedback or have it proofread what you have written.
Apple has also expanded automatic proofreading across the system, including many third-party apps, while Write with Siri lets you explicitly ask for changes when you want more control.
7. “Give me some tips to improve my tennis backhand”
Traditional Siri was much better at Apple-specific commands and straightforward factual questions than open-ended requests. Siri AI adds broad world knowledge, allowing it to respond to much wider questions conversationally.
Apple uses improving a tennis backhand as one example. You could similarly ask about a subject you are learning, ideas for something to do at the weekend or a topic you want explained without immediately being sent to a web search.
8. Ask Siri what your camera is looking at
iOS 27 adds a dedicated Siri mode to Camera, combining Siri AI with Visual Intelligence.
Point your iPhone at something and you can ask Siri questions about what it sees. That might mean identifying an object, asking about a plant, getting nutritional information about food or translating text in front of you.
Siri can also turn what the camera sees into an action. Point it at an event invitation and it can help add the event to Calendar. Point it at a restaurant check and iPhone can offer to split the bill using Apple Cash where the feature is supported.
9. Ask Siri to do something with what is already on your screen
Onscreen awareness is useful for more than asking questions. Siri can take information it sees in one place and use it somewhere else.
If an address appears in a message, for example, you no longer have to manually copy it before asking Siri to use it. The same principle applies to dates, images, documents and other information already visible on the iPhone.
This makes Siri feel less like a separate voice interface and more like something that understands what you are already doing on the device.
10. Continue a Siri conversation later
iOS 27 introduces a dedicated Siri app, giving Siri conversations a permanent home on the iPhone.
You can open the app to start a new conversation or return to an earlier one and continue where you left off. Conversations can also privately sync across supported Apple devices using iCloud.
It is a significant change from the old Siri experience, where interactions largely felt temporary. A research question, travel plan or longer piece of writing can now become an ongoing conversation rather than something you need to reconstruct each time.
There is one important catch
Not every iPhone running iOS 27 gets these capabilities. Siri AI requires an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, which includes iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 models or later. Siri AI is initially available in English and remains a beta, with regional availability differing.
Apple also says some server-based Apple Intelligence features, including Siri AI, are subject to daily usage limits.
For supported devices, though, Siri in iOS 27 is much more than a visual redesign. Personal context, onscreen awareness, app actions, world knowledge and the ability to maintain conversations change the kinds of requests that make sense to ask in the first place.