I’ve been trying out Siri AI, and so far it’s really working

Parents only want one thing from AI: adding a list of soccer games or “Spirit Week” days from a poorly formatted email or flyer On their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for iPhone parents: the new Siri can finally do just that.

after He stumbled through his first launch From Siri infused with artificial intelligence, Apple is trying again. Newly upgraded Siri AI He can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your garden, make a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to put some compost in that flower bed. He can refer to the information in your email and calendar to make his 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 an email to your calendar. I’ve tried all of these scenarios myself and seen it happen. AI Siri is real this time.

But it’s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, especially if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. Plant problems have been diagnosed and… Schedule maintenance reminders for several months nowif not longer. The new Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI would look like “Gemini, circa 2025.”

But Siri AI has its own flavor. Apple has There are a lot of special things happening under the hood And in the cloud. It draws from a range of data on the device collected from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap the relevant bits when needed. Claims that cannot be fully handled on-device are sent to Apple’s private cloud computing service with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini deals with personal context differently; You choose to share your Gmail or calendar, and it will then go directly to those sources to get information when needed.

Whether Siri AI works well depends a lot on the context of understanding the AI. So far, things are going well. I asked for this when I needed to return some camera equipment I rented for WWDC, and found the information from a calendar event I created and in an email (due back on Friday, for safekeeping). Likewise, asking it something like “Add these events to my calendar” will constantly trigger it to point to the information on my screen. So far, so good.

I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any trickery — I didn’t exactly do a stress test, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt “I can’t help you with that” to a suspicious prompt. justice. As a speaker, the new Siri also sounds quieter than the Gemini. I gave them the same question and asked them why the flowers in front of my house were wilting. They both offered verbal responses with plenty of possible reasons, but Gemini started with, “This is very frustrating…” where Siri was more direct and proceeded to diagnose the situation.

The new Siri handled my follow requests well, too. I asked him to recommend a garden center “close to home” and he came up with a good suggestion. I also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project, and added a calendar event, all with one prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but that’s it Siri. The fact that it worked at all is a step forward that took many years.

The new Siri is showing up in a lot of places on iPhone. I’ve grown accustomed to swiping down on the home screen and using search to access apps, and every time I do that, I get a big “Search or Ask” prompt with a glowing, blinking cursor. A long press on the wake button will now summon Siri from Dynamic Island as well, instead of presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. All the changes add a 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 solve it. It supports a very basic set of features — which are not available here DoorDashing made burritos for you – But it actually does what is advertised. For a company that made big promises for Siri two years ago that never materialized, this is a big deal. “It works” and “it will actually ship to customers” are the two goals Apple can’t miss here. It’s currently only in beta for developers, but it’s more realistic than the first AI Siri we ever showed at WWDC. Apple needs this version of Siri to restore trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this seems like a small step toward restoring that trust.

Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge