If you're like me, you've spent years ignoring most of Siri's functionality. Sure, it's great for setting timers, making calls, and sending a text. But that's kind of it—Apple's promise of an "always-on" digital assistant never truly delivered.
But that's finally changed with the recent launch of Siri AI. Fifteen years after debuting the app on the iPhone 4S and four years after the release of ChatGPT, Apple has taken the time to build out its own private Apple Foundation Models (with little help from Google) that work both on-device and on Apple's servers to give quick responses to your queries. Siri AI's answers are short, to the point, and actually useful. However, the conversational side isn't the only new thing about Siri AI. In fact, once you scratch the surface, you'll find Siri AI features embedded across the entire iOS and macOS ecosystem. Here's how to get the most out of Apple's new, enhanced digital assistant.
Use Silent Response to make sure Siri always answers silently
Siri AI is already tuned for brevity. Compared to Gemini or Claude, its responses are short and to the point. But still, if you ask something with your voice, it responds using voice as well. I personally prefer to quickly read through Siri responses. If you’re like me, you can enable a hidden setting that makes sure that Siri always answers silently, no matter if you’re writing to it or using your voice. Go to Settings > Siri > Responses and switch to the Silent Response option.
Make Siri AI sound more natural using Expressive Voice
On the other hand, if you prefer to listen to Siri's responses, it's worth it to spend some time fine-tuning them. If you have an iPhone that’s under two years old, you have access to a more expressive Siri voice. Siri AI has an Expressive Voice feature that works on iPhone 17 Pro and higher, iPhone Air, and Macs with an M3 processor or higher (at least 12GB RAM).
To find this feature, go to Settings > Siri > Voice. Here, you can change the Pace to make Siri faster or slower. The big feature is the Expressivity slider; you can use it to make Siri sound brighter and more enthusiastic, rather than flat. You also have several voice options at the top (color-coded).
Use Visual Intelligence to have Siri take action on anything on your screen
Visual Intelligence is deeply integrated into iOS 27 and macOS 27, and it turns anything on your screen into a source that Siri AI can act upon. It can search anything on your screen, and even take action on things it finds out. You can highlight any text on an iPhone, tap and hold, and choose the Ask Siri option. On the Mac, Ask Siri is the first option in the right-click menu. Choose a file, select text, and get started talking to Siri.
But it goes further. Just pull up Siri AI on your iPhone or Mac and start asking questions about what you’re seeing on screen. If you’re seeing a photo of a cafe on Instagram, ask where it is, or ask Siri to open it in Maps. If you’re watching a scene from a movie or a TV show, ask Siri where it’s from.
Use Apple’s Cloud Photos Cleanup feature to reliably remove objects from your photos
Clean Up was part of Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18, but it wasn’t great. It used on-device models to remove objects, and the results were lacking. Now that Apple runs its own Apple Foundation Models in Private Cloud Compute, it can securely process images on its servers, and the Clean Up process is much better. It now removes objects from photos very reliably, and even accounts for shadows. But to use this, you have to make sure to use the High Quality feature (instead of the default Auto mode).
Tap the Edit button in a photo, go to Tools > Clean Up, and from the top, switch to the High Quality option. Now brush over or tap an object you want to remove. Then, tap Clean Up and wait for a while until Apple’s servers complete the process. Tap Done to save the changes.
Add multiple calendar events to the Calendar app at once using Siri Visual Intelligence
One of the most tedious parts of using the Calendar app is manually entering multiple events from a complicated schedule—say, for a season's worth of your kid’s soccer practices, or your college course's weekly lecture schedule. With Visual Intelligence in iOS 27, this is now table stakes: You can point your iPhone camera towards a schedule or take a screenshot of one, then tap the Add to Calendar button. Siri will recognize all the events, and you’ll get an option to add them to the calendar individually or all at once.
Use the Mail app integration to archive, triage, and manage emails
Siri AI's Mail integration is a hidden gem. Once your iPhone or Mac is done indexing your local data from Mail, you can use Siri AI to triage and manage your Mail without even opening the Mail app. In my testing, it works really well, especially because Siri AI understands the context of an email. This means you don't need to remember the exact details about the sender or the subject. You can just ask something like, "Find all emails about my flights from last week and send them to my accountant." You can also ask it to do things for you. For example, you can say, "Archive all the emails from Walmart from last month," and it will give you a one-button option to do just that.
Use this hidden setting to automatically send messages without confirmation
When you start using the new Siri AI more often, you'll realize that it asks for confirmation way too often. For things like deleting mail, that's useful. But for sending messages, less so. There is a hidden setting that removes the extra step when it comes to sending messages via Siri. Go to Settings > Siri > Responses and enable Automatically Send Messages.
Use the Camera Control gesture to manage Siri AI’s camera features
After the Siri AI upgrade in iOS 27, I find myself using the Camera Control often, and you should try it too. Just press and hold the Camera Control button to launch the camera's Siri mode. Point towards anything you want to find out more about and tap the big Siri icon. In a second or two, you will get the Siri response at the top, along with relevant actions based on what you're looking at. This feature is genuinely useful, and if you don't like using the Camera Control (or don't have access to it on your iPhone), you can also add the Siri AI shortcut to the lock screen, Control Center, or the Action button.
Ask Siri AI to create custom Shortcuts for you
While Shortcuts has been one of Apple's most powerful features, it's also one of the hardest to use. Making an automation requires setting up steps, selecting variables, and thinking about chronology, and more. With Siri AI, Apple is trying to reduce that burden. And when it comes to simpler stuff that an everyday iPhone user needs, it works.
For example, you can open Shortcuts, create a new shortcut, and use the Describe a shortcut feature to talk about a Shortcut you want to build in natural language. You can ask Siri to create a daily morning Shortcut that shows you the day's weather, upcoming calendar events, and the to-do list for the day. You can also ask it to create a Shortcut that converts images in batches and creates new notes with a pre-made template.
Talk to ChatGPT using this hidden gesture
While Apple is now using its own Apple Foundation Models for the new Siri AI, ChatGPT isn’t technically gone. If you have a complex question, or if Siri AI’s answer isn’t doing the trick, you can still summon ChatGPT from the Siri AI app (no need to go to the ChatGPT app for this). Tap on the text field in the Siri app, choose the Ask option and then switch to the ChatGPT service. Siri AI is quite intelligent at routing, so if ChatGPT can’t answer, it will route you back to Siri AI’s own models.