iOS 27: New 'Beta' Siri Features Could Be Gated Behind a Waitlist

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has published his WWDC preview ahead of Monday's keynote, and while almost all of the iOS 27 features he covers have already made the rounds, there are a couple of details worth highlighting.

As we've covered previously, Apple is turning Siri into a full chatbot that users can interact with, similar to Claude or ChatGPT. The Siri chatbot will be integrated into Apple's operating systems at the system level, and there will also be a Siri app for back-and-forth conversations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gurman says that Siri chats will sync across devices via iCloud, making Apple's assistant similar to rivals like ChatGPT that retain history across sessions. Users' chats with Siri will also be able to auto-delete on a schedule, 30 days, a year, or never. The options will be controlled in Settings, much like Messages.

Notably, Gurman says that Apple is still internally labeling the long-delayed revamped Siri as a "beta" and "preview," suggesting it won't be marketed as finished software when it arrives later this year. That may frustrate some users, given that Apple Intelligence features that were first teased in 2024 have been repeatedly delayed, but it's worth noting that the original Siri also held the same "beta" caveat for two years after its 2011 debut.

As a result of the abiding "beta" moniker, Gurman says it's possible that Apple will initially introduce a waitlist for the new Siri that could gate access to certain features when iOS 27 arrives in September, similar to the initial launch of the Apple Intelligence platform two years ago. It's not clear which features they might be, though.