Apple Siri AI: A waitlist, English only, and not on EU iPhones

Apple released iOS 27 on Monday, along with iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27 and tvOS 27. The headline feature is a rebuilt assistant that Apple calls Siri AI. Installing the update is not enough to get it.

What Apple says about availability

Apple’s availability notes are specific on this point. "Mac and Apple Vision Pro users in the EU will be able to access Siri AI when set to a supported language. Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS," the company writes. No date follows and no reason. China is left out entirely. Apple says it is still working through regulatory requirements there.

The rest of the update ships normally in Europe. The redesigned Screen Time, the new parental controls, the Liquid Glass slider, faster app launches, Image Playground and the photo editing tools all arrive. Apple Intelligence has supported German, French, Italian and a dozen other languages for a while and still does. The block applies to the assistant, not to Apple Intelligence itself.

The Mac works, in English

That EU exception looks like a way around the block. It comes with a condition in the same sentence. The device has to be set to a supported language, and the only supported language right now is English. French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish arrive in October. German is not on that list. Anyone in the EU who wants Siri AI today switches a Mac to English and speaks English to it.

The pattern is familiar by now. Google shipped its Gemini app for Windows last week and left the advertised Spark agent out of the European Economic Area. OpenAI had the same situation this month, when Plus subscribers were paying for GPT-6 Astra without being able to pick it in the chat.

A waitlist, not a switch

Outside the EU the update on its own still does not deliver. Siri AI is in beta, and getting it means joining a waitlist. The entry is in Settings under Siri and reads "Try Siri AI (beta)". A server then returns an estimated wait. Apple can adjust that estimate as demand shifts. During the beta period some people waited up to a week.

The hardware bar matters as well. Apple lists iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, iPhone 16 models or later, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, plus any Mac with M1 or later. The same footnote adds that the Siri app is not available for users under 13. On the Apple Watch the assistant depends on the paired iPhone, so the EU rule applies there as well. CarPlay is not affected, and five AI assistants now share the space there.

Daily limits from the start

The footnote has one more point. Features that rely on Apple’s server-side models are subject to daily usage limits, and Apple names Siri AI among them. Apple does not say how high those limits are. They "may vary by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors". Expanded access to such features "will be available for a fee in the future", the company adds. The new Siri is capped from the start, much like Gemini Notebook and its daily question limit.

iPhone owners in the EU keep the old Siri for now, alongside the rest of Apple Intelligence. Apple has not said when that changes.