Why is there a waitlist for Siri AI in iOS 27?

Siri AI is the headline feature of iOS 27, but you can't use it right away.

After months of testing, Apple's iOS 27 and other updates are now available to the general public. On iPhone and iPad, the latest updates bring a litany of performance improvements, such as faster app launching and AirDrop transfers, but the headlining feature is undeniably the new Siri AI .

Siri AI is a comprehensive overhaul of Apple's virtual assistant that's capable of conversational input, similar to modern chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. In fact, the new Siri shares many of Gemini's underpinnings as Apple partnered with Google to build its own semi-custom AI models. Apple has gone a few steps further to integrate Siri into the OS, giving it access to your emails, messages and other on-device content.

With Siri AI getting such a drastic overhaul, you might expect it to be available as soon as you update to iOS 27. However, that's not the case — you need to manually enable the feature and join a waitlist for now. Here's how you can do that and why Apple has gated the much-anticipated Siri overhaul behind a waitlist.

Siri AI requires iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, so your first order of business is to check for pending software updates to make sure you're on the latest version. Open the Settings app and navigate to General > Software Update to check, then install as needed.

Once that's done, head back into Settings and tap Siri > Try Siri AI (Beta) . If you don't see the option, try changing your language to English (United States) within the same Siri menu if it's not already. Be sure you have United Stated selected under Settings > General > Language & Region > Region , as well . Support for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean is expected to arrive in October 2026 .

Even though iOS 27 is available on iPhone models back to the iPhone 11 series, not all of them support the new Siri AI. Just like the general Apple Intelligence cutoff, devices older than the iPhone 15 Pro series (including the non-Pro iPhone 15 models) don't get the new Siri AI. For Siri AI on your iPad, you'll need either the seventh-gen iPad mini (A17 Pro) or an iPad with an M1 processor or later.

You won't be able to sign up for the Siri AI waitlist if your Apple Account region is set to China or a country in the European Union. The European Commission has required Apple to give rival AI companies equal access to the same underlying system data Siri AI has , citing the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, the iPhone maker pushed back, arguing that opening up access to third parties could pose a threat to user privacy. Apple says that its Private Cloud Compute system used for Siri AI is specifically designed to prevent eavesdropping and data collection.