Apple is opening up its biggest overhaul of Siri to a broader audience with the release of the iOS 27 public beta, giving everyday users a chance to try out the new AI assistant ahead of its broader release later this fall.

The public beta marks the first time Apple has made its AI-powered Siri widely available beyond developers. With some 2.5 billion active devices worldwide, even if only a fraction of users install the public beta, it will still represent the largest test of Apple’s redesigned AI assistant and its answer to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others.

The Siri AI update, which was officially announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, turns Apple’s former voice assistant into a more capable AI-powered tool that can access information on a user’s device, including emails, photos, and messages, as well as respond to what’s on the screen and base its responses on world knowledge, similar to any AI chatbot today.

It is also more deeply integrated into the entire operating system. It can be accessed by saying “Hey Siri” or by pressing the side button, as before, as well as swiping down from the Dynamic Island (the black bar at the top of the screen). Plus, it’s built into the iPhone’s built-in search tool, Spotlight, making it more powerful than before because you can search for answers to almost any question.

For the first time, Siri also received its own standalone app, a user experience that people already comfortable with chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini may prefer. However, because Siri is so deeply integrated throughout the iPhone, accessing it through an app seems unnecessary.

In addition to iOS 27 on iPhone, the updated Siri is available on all other Apple products, including iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, CarPlay, AirPods, Apple TV, and Vision Pro.

Under the hood, Siri AI leverages Apple intelligence, including Apple’s new Foundation models that run on the device and use its Private Cloud Compute. Apple built its Foundation Models in collaboration with Google and its Gemini model, but these models are not just a rebranded version of Gemini. Instead, Apple’s models were built specifically for its Apple Silicon using proprietary data and distilled from Google’s Gemini, a process that uses Gemini to create smaller, highly efficient models built into iOS and other Apple software. Meanwhile, Private Cloud Compute ensures that Apple does not store or access users’ personal data.

In early testing of the developer version of Siri AI, the assistant was better able to handle basic tasks on the phone, such as finding certain photos in your photo library, summarizing group texts, adding a texted appointment to your calendar, looking up nutritional information about what’s in your camera view. It was also better at answering questions that you would normally have to search the web to answer, like when an upcoming local event is happening or what’s happening in the news.

In the developer beta, Siri sometimes threw error messages or got confused. (For example, I once asked Siri for the latest news on Iran and she searched my contacts for someone with that name.)

However, it’s easy to see Siri becoming a bigger part of your daily digital life, especially since it doesn’t require you to open an app to use it.

Overall, this year’s developer betas have been pretty stable, making it much easier to recommend the public beta this time around. Of course, installing a beta should always be approached with caution; If your device should run perfectly without any issues and never experience errors, you may want to wait until the public release of iOS 27, which is expected in September.