Apple Intelligence Siri Update Still Has a Couple of Months Left (at Least)
When Apple first unveiled Apple Intelligence , its suite of generative artificial intelligence features, a large part of the announcement revolved around the powerful Siri. Apple’s digital assistant will no longer lag behind competitors such as Google: thanks to the power of artificial intelligence, the new Siri can actually be useful.
When Apple Intelligence is fully operational, Siri will reportedly be much more contextually aware and will be able to scan what’s on your phone to understand and answer the questions you ask. If your friend sends you their new address, you can ask Siri to “add this address to their contact card.” You don’t need to specify which address or which contact, as Apple says Assistant will be able to figure it out from what’s currently displayed on the screen. Another important feature is the ability to ask Siri to perform an action for you: you can ask Siri to send an email you have in your drafts, edit an image on your behalf, or add a photo to a specific note.
If your iPhone is compatible with Apple Intelligence, you might assume it supports the new Siri. After all, iOS 18 has been out for a while now, and Apple has been heavily promoting Apple Intelligence (and the new Siri), including with a campaign featuring Bella Ramsey. Some Apple Store employees even started chanting about artificial intelligence during the iPhone 16 presentation .
Waiting game
The fact is that there is no new Siri yet. Apple has slightly updated Siri with iOS 18.1, and it’s the first wave of new artificial intelligence features : this includes a new Siri design that glows around the edges of the display; the ability to type in Siri by double tapping on the bottom of the screen; Siri’s ability to understand requests, even if you misspoke; and a new feature that turns Siri into an impromptu tech help desk (e.g., “How do I turn off Do Not Disturb?”).
But iOS 18.1 arrived without any further updates to Siri. iOS 18.2 added more Apple Intelligence features , including ChatGPT integration, but no major changes to Siri. iOS 18.3 was a smaller update (Apple even disabled notification summary for certain types of alerts ) but, again, skipped any updates to Siri.
It’s unclear when the full form of Siri will appear
Anyone eagerly awaiting Siri’s promise of artificial intelligence may have to keep waiting. For a long time, it seemed like these updates would be included in either iOS 18.3 or iOS 18.4. Of course, after the lack of Siri updates in version 18.3, these predictions turned to iOS 18.4.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported back in September that Apple plans to implement most of Siri’s important features in this update. However, Gurman said last week that problems and bugs have plagued the development teams , which could delay Siri’s launch even further.
It seems we’ll find out soon. Apple is now saying in the fine print that additional Apple Intelligence features (as well as additional language support) will arrive in early April. The company doesn’t specify, but these features will most likely become part of iOS 18.4. Before the company releases this update in early April, they will need to beta test it, which means we should see the first beta of 18.4 sooner rather than later. When it arrives, we’ll know if Apple is now planning to implement big changes to Siri or if they’ve put those updates on the back burner again.
Not all iPhones will get new Siri features
While Apple is supporting older iPhone models like the XS with iOS 18, not many iPhones will actually get these new Siri features. This is because Apple Intelligence is limited to the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16 series , including the new iPhone 16e . If you have an iPhone 15 or older, you won’t see these new updates, even if you update to iOS 18.4 or any other update that contains the updated Siri AI.