Parents want one thing, and one thing only, without AI: to add a list of soccer games or “spirit week” themed dates from an email or poorly designed flyer to their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones – the new Siri can finally do this.
After stumbling with its first AI-powered Siri launch, Apple is trying again. The newly developed Siri AI can talk to 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 put down some compost in that flower bed. It can refer to information in your email and calendar to make its own recommendations or provide a really helpful answer to the question: “When should I leave for the airport?” And yes, it can also add a list of events from email to your calendar. I tried all these scenarios myself and saw it happen. AI Siri is real this time.
But it’s also a pretty basic set of AI assistant features in 2026, especially when you compare it to what Gemini was doing on Android a few years ago. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It has been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now, if not more. The new Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI sounds a little like “Gemini, circa 2025.”
Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood and in the cloud. It draws on device-based data collected from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so that Siri can enter the appropriate bits when needed. Commands that cannot be fully handled on the device are sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute with only the appropriate pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles human essence differently; you log into your Gmail or calendar sharing, and it will go directly to those sources for information when needed.
Siri AI’s effectiveness is highly dependent on the AI’s cognitive context. So far, it’s doing great. I asked it when I needed to return the camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it got the information from the calendar event I had made and in the email (it will be back on Friday, to record). Similarly, commanding it with something like “add these events to my calendar” will always cause it to refer to the information on my screen. So far, so good.
I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans – I didn’t really test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to turn the curt “I can’t help you with that” into a shadowy notification. Good. As a conversationalist, the new Siri also seems less romantic than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seem to be wilting. They both gave vague answers with a number of possible reasons, but Gemini’s started with “That’s incredibly frustrating…” where Siri understood and went straight to diagnosing the situation.
The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center “closer to home” and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with specific checklist items for my garden renovation project and added a calendar event, all from one notification. Good basics, but this is it Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that has been years in the making.
The new Siri appears in many places on the iPhone. I’ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the home screen and using search to access apps, and every time I do there’s a giant “search or ask” prompt with a glowing, blinking pointer. Long-pressing the wake button summons Siri from Dynamic Island now, too, instead of presenting it as a glowing border on the screen. The changes all add to the subtle feeling that you’re never too far away from Siri.
The changes all add to the subtle feeling that you’re never too far away from Siri
This iteration of Siri sounds like the AI assistant you’d build if you knew you couldn’t screw it up. It supports a nice basic set of features – it’s not here Your DoorDashing does it for you – but it actually does what it’s advertised to do. For a company that made big Siri promises two years ago that never materialized, that’s a big deal. “It works” and “It will actually ship to customers” are two targets Apple can’t miss here. It’s only in developer beta right now, but it’s more realistic than the first AI Siri we showed at WWDC ever. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a small step towards restoring that trust.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
