Testing Siri AI from Beta to Release
The prospect of seeing Apple’s artificial intelligence product work, I mean really work after years of promise unfulfilled was too close to pass up. I set my phone to the U.S. and downloaded the newest iOS beta. For the entire beta period, I spent that time messing with Siri AI to see if it was good. The word in the Internets was that with access to our local data, this new Siri product was useful.
I’d done a few things to try and accelerate the process too. I’d run a script on the Mac that would give me access, but not system-wide, just to the Siri LLM chat app. That was a start. On the iPhone, I’d switch my region and keyboard to the united states in the hopes that would get me in. My phone would sit endlessly indexing on the iOS 27 developer beta 1 while being stuck on the waitlist.
With an update to beta 2, my access to Siri’s new features was finally granted. Just about the first thing to try was a free-flowing question that would require Siri to look into my mail and dig out something good. I asked it to find the last time I bought a smart lock:
impressive
Going further, I asked Siri to find me a promotional email describing a price increase to Plex last year. I’d written about it previously and wanted to update that post with more details. In one simple natural search from Spotlight, Siri found that email and I could open it directly. This helped me confirm a detail, update the post and make my writing better.
Going in a different direction, I used an image I’d taken of a book that was in my camera roll and fed it to Siri. I asked it what was going on in the photo:
Maybe the old Siri would have been able to do this too.
In total, my use of the AI increased substantially, but perhaps the more important factor is what this AI has done to me: my trust that it would be of use or provide answers has increased greatly. In the end, I used it more often initially. As time passed, I used the tool less and less to the point where, with the iPhone 18, I’ll go days without reaching out to it. It appears that AI really has a ways to go in terms of becoming that killer go-to tool.
Over time my use of it did fall off, just as iOS 27 has placed this tool front and center. The rollout feels a little forced, but my use of AI always seems to roll back to ChatGPT over that of Siri. Could there be a place for multiple chatbots in a person’s life? Apple and others are banking on it.
Hove you been using Siri AI more now that it’s out?