Apple's New Siri AI Works, Two Years Late
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- Apple's new Siri AI can add calendar events from emails or flyers, diagnose plant problems, build shopping lists, and set reminders — all tested and confirmed working by the author.
- Google's Gemini on Android has offered comparable capabilities (adding events from screenshots, plant diagnosis, maintenance reminders) for at least a year, making the new Siri feel like 'Gemini, circa 2025.'
- New Siri is built on Gemini models, though Apple layers proprietary on-device data indexing and Private Cloud Compute on top, handling personal context differently than Gemini's direct access to Gmail and calendar.
- Siri's context awareness performed well in testing — it located a camera gear rental return date across both a calendar event and a corresponding email, and consistently pulled on-screen info when prompted to 'add these events to my calendar.'
- Siri's guardrails returned a curt refusal to a shady prompt, and its tone was notably more direct and less effusive than Gemini's, which opened a plant-diagnosis reply with 'That is incredibly frustrating…'
- The upgrade is currently available only in developer beta — a small but real step forward from the AI Siri Apple first showed at WWDC two years ago that never shipped.
- Photography credit goes to Allison Johnson of The Verge.
Why it matters: Apple is shipping, in beta, what it promised two years ago at WWDC and never delivered — basic, functional AI assistant features that Gemini on Android has had for at least a year. For Apple, the bar is lower than 'innovative': it's 'does it work and will it actually reach customers,' a trust threshold the company needs to clear after the embarrassing 2024 Siri delay.
