{"id":726641,"date":"2026-06-10T03:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T03:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726641\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T03:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T03:47:11","slug":"i-tried-siri-ai-and-so-far-it-actually-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726641\/","title":{"rendered":"I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or \u201cspirit week\u201d theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot<\/a>. And I have good news for parents with iPhones \u2014 the new Siri can finally do this.<\/p>\n

After stumbling through its first launch<\/a> of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI<\/a> can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to lay down some compost in that flower bed. It can reference information in your email and calendar to make its recommendations or provide an actually helpful answer to the question: \u201cWhen should I leave for the airport?\u201d And yes, it can even add a list of events from an email to your calendar. I tried all of these scenarios out for myself and I saw it happen. AI Siri is for real this time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is like, baby\u2019s first AI assistant stuff, but it\u2019s huge that it actually works.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Honestly Bun Mee is my go-to, so this is a good call.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, particularly if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google\u2019s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It\u2019s been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now<\/a>, if not longer. New Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI feels a little bit \u201cGemini, circa 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood<\/a> and in the cloud. It draws from an on-device pool of data that\u2019s gleaned from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap into the relevant bits when needed. Prompts that can\u2019t be handled fully on device are sent to Apple\u2019s Private Cloud Compute with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles personal context differently; you opt into sharing your Gmail or calendar, and then it\u2019ll go directly to those sources to get the information when needed.<\/p>\n

Siri AI working well depends a lot on the AI understanding context. So far, it\u2019s doing pretty well. I asked it when I needed to return some camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it found the information from a calendar event I\u2019d made and in an email (it\u2019s due back Friday, for the record). Likewise, prompting it with something like \u201cadd these events to my calendar\u201d will consistently trigger it to reference the information on my screen. So far, so good.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans \u2014 I didn\u2019t exactly stress test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt \u201cI can\u2019t help you with that\u201d to a shady prompt. Fair. As a conversationalist, new Siri also seems a bit more dispassionate than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seemed to be wilting. They both gave wordy responses with a lot of possible causes, but Gemini\u2019s started with \u201cThat is incredibly frustrating\u2026\u201d where Siri was more direct and got right into diagnosing the situation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Siri AI\u2019s response to my question gets to the point quicker.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Gemini sends its sympathies. <\/p>\n

The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center \u201cnear home\u201d and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project and added a calendar event, all from a single prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but this is Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that\u2019s been years in the making.<\/p>\n

New Siri pops up in a lot of places on the iPhone. I\u2019ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the homescreen and using search to get to apps, and every time I do there\u2019s a big prompt to \u201csearch or ask\u201d with a glowing, blinking cursor. Long pressing the wake button summons Siri from the Dynamic Island now, too, rather than presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you\u2019re never very far away from Siri.<\/p>\n

The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you\u2019re never very far away from Siri<\/p>\n

This iteration of Siri feels like the AI assistant you\u2019d build if you knew you couldn\u2019t screw it up. It supports a pretty basic set of features \u2014 it\u2019s not out here DoorDashing your burritos for you<\/a> \u2014 but it actually does what\u2019s advertised. For the company that made big promises of Siri two years ago that never materialized, that\u2019s a big deal. \u201cIt works\u201d and \u201cIt will actually ship to customers\u201d are the two targets that Apple couldn\u2019t miss here. It\u2019s only in a developer beta now, but it\u2019s realer than the first AI Siri we were shown at WWDC ever was. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn back trust. And based on what I\u2019ve seen so far, this looks like a small step toward getting that trust back.<\/p>\n

Photography by Allison Johnson \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

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