Gemini has nothing to fear from the new Siri AI

27 Jun 2026, 12:00 by Jesse Hollington · Android Police

While years of broken promises left many beginning to doubt whether it was ever coming, Apple finally unveiled a much-improved version of its beleaguered Siri voice assistant this month.

Apple not only showed it off during its Worldwide Developers Conference, but also delivered a functional version in the very first developer beta of iOS 27.

Considering it's taken Apple 15 years to improve Siri — and it took Google's help — it raises an obvious question: Can Apple's AI models, built on the shoulders of Gemini, match or surpass those foundations?

Being an eager early adopter, I jumped into the iOS 27 developer beta the day it landed. The good news? While Siri has some advantages over Gemini, it's an entirely different animal.

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Siri AI's awkward pedigree

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Apple partnered with Google earlier this year to build the new Siri, but it's not the first time it sought its rival's help.

In 2018, Apple poached Google's AI chief, but when his division ultimately failed to deliver the promised Siri, Apple seismically shifted its AI org chart and held a "bake off" to choose an established AI company to help — and Google came out on top.

At that point, many assumed Siri would be a white-labelled version of Gemini. However, Apple made it clear it's merely using Google's AI expertise to build its own Apple Foundation Models.

Siri and Gemini may share DNA, but they're more like cousins than siblings.

All business, no whimsy

Siri will give you answers, but it's not your friend

What Apple has built in iOS 27 is a full chatbot.

There's now a dedicated "Siri" app on the iPhone that functions much like Gemini. It's tightly integrated with Apple's operating systems, but at its core, it's still just a chat interface.

Siri and Gemini function similarly, but differ in approach and versatility.

Siri AI is a one-dimensional chatbot. The personality is professional but flat. Its world knowledge is significantly better than it ever was.

Siri can now answer general questions accurately without sending you to the web — but it gives you the facts and nothing but the facts.

It's best to think of Siri AI as best for getting quick answers, while Gemini is a tool for exploring topics more deeply.

Gemini has multiple ways to do this. It gives you more context around its answers, leads you into asking more questions, and also has multiple models to choose from — including a "Deep Research" mode for those who really want to get into the meat of something.

Siri AI has none of that. While Apple has four text-based models in play, you don't get to see which one it's using, much less choose one.

That's typical of Apple's approach to keep things as simple as possible and avoid giving its users too many knobs and buttons.

While Gemini will give you much more whimsical and detailed answers, the most Siri AI does right now is toss in an image that nobody asked for.

That's presumably to add some window-dressing to what would otherwise be a dry wall of text, but it often feels odd.

I tossed Gemini and Siri a few softballs to compare their responses. Both came up with correct answers to broad, general-knowledge questions about literature, basic science, math, and accounting.

As a rule, Gemini replied with more naturally conversational responses while Siri's answers read like a Wikipedia article, often complete with a piece of artwork.

Siri wasn't blatantly plagiarizing the text — it rephrased it with nice clarity — but it was still fairly basic.

Siri also made more mistakes than Gemini when it came to current affairs and local knowledge — to a question about Toronto Public Library policies, it cited a local university library instead.

Still, I'm willing to give it a pass for now as we're still in the very early stages (and it's not like Gemini gets everything right either).

It's all about the (personal) context

Siri AI can delve more deeply into your life

When Apple promised upcoming Siri improvements two years ago, its main selling points were privacy and personal context.

Everything would be processed on your device, using a semantic index to ferret out personal information from emails, calendars, text messages, and more to help answer your questions — not unlike how a human personal assistant would help you.

This is the one area in which Siri comes out on top right now. While Gemini can absolutely link to your Google Workspace apps like Gmail, that's a cloud-based connection, and it still leaves out important areas like Google Messages.

In my experience, it also doesn't work as seamlessly as I'd expected, as Gemini seems hesitant to link to things like Gmail and Calendar unless it's sure you're asking it to.

By contrast, Siri AI consistently nails these types of requests. That's to be expected, as Apple built it for this purpose, but it's still fascinating to see how easily — and quickly — it can weave my life history into its responses.

For example, when I asked Siri AI what my daughter and I did for her birthday last year, it gave me a surprisingly detailed list of the day's events by pulling together calendar entries, text message conversations, and photos.

When I asked Siri when my feline companion died, it was able to track down where I mentioned it in a text messaging conversation from 2015.

Still, Gemini has another ace up its sleeve: personalization and memory.

While Siri will index past conversations in the same way as everything else on your device, it won't organically use those to learn about you and influence future conversations.

There are also no controls for personalization, and nothing that even comes close to Gemini's Gems for setting up predefined workflows.

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Apple is aiming for professional distance

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Many of these aren't just "beta 1" limitations. Apple's executives have explicitly stated they have no interest in creating an AI companion.

In a recent interview with Mostly Human, Apple software chief Craig Federighi said it's not Apple's intention to engage users by pulling them into conversations and encouraging them to reveal things about themselves.

Siri's goal is to "help you get things done [...] help you learn about the world," Federighi says — and Apple wants to keep it that way.

In other words, Siri's drier personality isn't simply a byproduct of its digital youth.

It's a specific design choice on Apple's part to deliver a professional experience that gives people answers and lets them get on with their lives.

That's fine for someone who only wants quick answers, and I'll be the first to agree that we shouldn't give chatbots human-like characteristics.

Still, I find that a sense of personality is helpful when I want to dive into a topic.

I often roll my eyes at Gemini's sycophancy, but its enthusiastic way of responding can be refreshing when exploring otherwise dry topics — far more useful than Siri's approach of slapping in a photo merely to break up the text.