Apple ships Siri AI public beta in macOS 27 and iOS 27 with personal-data awareness

Apple's long-delayed Siri overhaul is now in testers' hands. The macOS 27 Golden Gate public beta puts Siri AI front and center as a personal-data-aware assistant: it can answer questions based on a user's own inbox, documents and on-device context, execute multi-step tasks inside apps, and power a new set of writing tools alongside an upgraded Visual Intelligence. Additional beta features include custom Safari extensions and Shortcuts authored in natural language.

On mobile, Apple is prepping iOS 27 for a fall 2026 release with the same revamped Siri and Apple Intelligence features threaded throughout, while iOS 26.6 lays groundwork on current iPhones. In parallel, Foxconn is ramping hiring as the iPhone 18 Pro enters mass production, with leaks pointing to in-camera bokeh and the AI-upgraded Siri as the marquee selling points.

Strategically, this is Apple attempting to close the gap after a rough stretch in which its AI ambitions lagged Google's and OpenAI's, and after it approved Alibaba's Qwen for Apple Intelligence in China. The personal-context grounding — Siri answering from your own mail and files — is the differentiator Apple has promised for over a year, and the feature most exposed to privacy scrutiny given it requires the assistant to index personal data.

Separately, OpenAI relaunched its Apple Health-connected ChatGPT feature with expanded access this week, a reminder that Apple's own health and assistant ambitions face third-party competition even on its own platform. What to watch: real-world reliability of the personal-data grounding in beta, and whether Apple keeps the fall ship date or slips again.