The new Siri finally arrives, but Apple delivers it in “beta” after two years of delay

WWDC 2026 opens this Monday, June 8, and Apple will finally show the Siri that it has been promising since 2024. Except that an annoying detail is circulating: according to Mark Gurman, of Bloomberg, the assistant would arrive stamped “beta”.

Not just in the developer test versions: Gurman mentions a “high probability” that the label will also survive in the final version delivered to the general public in the fall. A “beta”, in short, is the admission that the software is not finished.

A “beta” after two years of delay

A little reminder to measure the extent of the thing. Apple showed this new generation Siri from June 2024, with access to personal context and control of apps. Then the firm postponed the launch several times, until receiving a collective complaint for false advertising in the United States. Apple agreed to pay 250 million dollars (around 230 million euros) to settle the case. After all that, seeing the assistant arrive in “beta” is enough to make one cringe.

Why this caution? According to Gurman, Apple still fears response times that are too long and invented responses (the famous “hallucinations” of generative AI). The “beta” label then serves as a safety net: it warns the user that the tool could be wrong, and the switch allows you to return to the old Siri in the event of a problem.

Concretely, the internal versions of iOS 27 display this label on the new Siri, with a switch to deactivate it and return to the old one. The new Siri is not just a simple facelift: Apple is reportedly preparing a dedicated application in the style of ChatGPT, with separate conversations, adding files and history. Everything would be based on a Gemini model provided by Google. In short, Apple is transforming its assistant into a real chatbot, but it prefers to warn that it is still under construction.

To go further

Gemini: our guide to understanding everything about Google AI

The verdict will depend on the keynote on June 8: if Apple maintains this “beta” until the public release in September, it is a rare signal of humility for a brand that hates promising what it does not deliver.

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