After years of promises, Apple has finally rebuilt Siri in iOS 27. But is Siri AI finally the digital assistant we’ve been waiting for? Joanna took Apple’s demos into the real world, spending a week using Siri for a road trip to the beach, shopping, meals, medical questions, personal advice—and yes, trying to make Siri her girlfriend. What makes the new Siri different is that it can understand a surprising amount of personal information from your iPhone. Joanna breaks down how Apple’s new AI works, what data stays private and whether we have ultimate trust in Apple. Chapters: [00:00 - 00:49] Intro [00:50 - 01:53] On-screen Awareness test [01:54 - 02:57] Personal Context test [02:58 - 05:05] Privacy (Private Cloud Compute + Orchestrator) explainer [05:06 - 06:08] Siri spending spree [06:09 - 07:05] MoneyMic [07:06 - 08:38] Siri’s guardrails [08:39 - 09:56] Basic tasks test [09:57 - 11:10] A week with Siri takeaways Thanks to Mercury for sponsoring this video mercury.com/command. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. 📬 Our videos are free here, but support our work by subscribing to the New Things. You’ll love the newsletters! thenewthings.com/subscribe. 📙 Order Joanna’s new book at joannastern.com 💼 Want to sponsor our stuff? Email [email protected] ▶️ Subscribe here so you don’t miss future videos https://www.youtube.com/c/joannastern Who is Joanna Stern? Emmy winner. Pulitzer finalist. Professional asker of uncomfortable questions. New York Times bestselling author. Joanna spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal making videos and writing columns before founding New Things. Before that, she helped start The Verge and worked at ABC News. She believes technology should work for humans—and that journalism should be fun. She is working on both. She also is the author of the new book I AM NOT A ROBOT: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. As NBC News' Chief Technology Analyst, her reporting and The New Things content regularly appears across NBC's broadcasts and platforms. For Joanna’s full resume, see LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/joannastern Or on X here: https://x.com/JoannaStern Or on LinkedIn here: linkedin.com/in/joannastern
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Just the fact that it doesn’t try to make conversation by asking me something after it answers my questions, it’s just perfect! Answer my question correctly and leave me alone. Loving Siri now
Only true Vergecast listeners appreciate the garage open command in the intro
I think it's important to note that Siri will try to run on a local llm running on device instead of sending it to apple's servers, and only sends it to the cloud for the more complex requests. This is why all devices that can run this Siri have to have atleast 8gb of ram in order to fit this model in the ram. I think it's worth it to test this Siri in airplane mode to see how much of an impact it has. (NOTE: There has been a lot of confusion regarding which devices support this Siri. Apple showed a slide in wwdc showing that devices with 12gb of ram (iPhones like iPhone air and iPhone 17 pro) have access to more advanced dictation features, a more advanced Siri voice, and a more advanced local model, but a lot of people have been misled and think that Siri is only compatible with those devices according to the slide, no, it is compatible with all apple intelligence supported devices, iPhone 15 pros, and all 16s and above.)
Anyone wearing Meta smart glasses shouldn't have to worry about their privacy
She is free to say what she wants now, doesn't need to appease anyone. That makes her voice appealing and convincing.
As an illustrator, I am SO happy that you have an ongoing relationship with yours (I think...., it might just be with your designer/art director). Your unified design look is terrific and consistent. Way to go!!!! You are killing your new independent gig!
I'm glad Joanna Stern has the power to set timers on my HomePod! HAHAHA!!!!
Are you sure you don't wanna be my girlfriend? Siri: No, thanks. LOL
While Siri is “thinking”, are you able to keep using your phone?
I think people dunking on Siri being “worse” than the “competition” miss the whole point. As you noticed it’s got ‘some’ guardrails where it matters for parasocialism and weird attachment to virtual things, but seems to me also purposely “dumber” than the other assistants precisely because it should just be that: an assistant. Sure, it can be frustrating and sometimes deal breaking when it fails at crucial tasks like calling someone important when time’s of the essence, but I’ll take that over “endless possibilities” while trading off all my personal info to this or that server. If these mostly minor inconveniences are the price to pay for an on-device private assistant that still manages to be of the “modern era”, I’m down. I was heavily considering switching to android and I still am just for the unfortunate fact that I’m from the EU so who knows when I can fully utilize this new Siri even after the official September launch (at least I can mess with it on Mac, in English… meh), but if and when it works it’s better for me than the competition. So even if I switch, it’ll be temporary.
4:56 YES. Apple if youre reading this, WE WANT THIS.
That part about switching to Apple Mail got me, because I have been contemplating that exact thing recently. Been using Gmail app and web for a long time but with some of the more recent updates to the Apple Mail app on iOS and MacOS plus what's coming the OS 27 releases it's becoming more compelling to make that switch. What have you done to me Apple???!!!! 🤪
At min 10:16 you talk about considering switching to Apple mail. My assumption is you're using another mail solution - most likely Gmail - on your Iphone. Why can't you can continue using Gmail and have Apple mail also duplicate what Gmail is doing in the background, which should still enable Siri to use it, no? Why would you considering switching?
Siri AI and OS 27 series are impressive and this is only the first beta!
0:32 Apple cut off 3, 4 and 5 kHz frequencies in their phrases mentioning Siri in their presentation so they wouldn't ask everybody to silence their Siri.
When do we get to set our Siri voice to Joanna's voice?
Great video. I just got the new SIRI on the DEV beta. I have been indexing for 9 days and its almost done now. I want SIRI to be that true personal assistant.
The Siri orchestrator looks like Toad in a high-viz vest.
Wow, getting friendzoned by Siri
love the curb refrence