Apple earlier this week previewed iOS 27, which brings Siri AI to the iPhone. During the WWDC 2026 keynote announcement Apple noted that the new software also brings its most advanced on-device AI model, explaining that it would power two features: more expressive Siri voices and a major accuracy gain for systemwide dictation.
Unfortunately, even if you have Apple’s latest base iPhone model, the iPhone 17, you’ll not be able to use those two new features, as both require 12GB of unified memory. While the the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max, alongside iPad models with the M4 chip or later, Macs with M3 or later, and Apple Vision Pro with M5 all have sufficient memory for the new features, the standard iPhone 17 has only 8GB of unified memory, falling short of the minimum memory requirements.
This means that iPhone 17 owners will not be able to adjust the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s speech so that the assistant sounds the way they want it. While that feature is cool and all, and who doesn’t like things just the way they like it. However, that feature is just frosting on an already tasty cake.
It’s the second feature that you might miss the most.
The systemwide dictation accuracy gain uses the on-device model to turn speech into polished text on the fly, handling capitalization, punctuation, and formatting automatically. Apple says it also boasts improved speech understanding to cut down on errors. So, if you get frustrated with speech-to-text in iOS 26, iOS 27 will be a welcome upgrade. But, only if you’re not on the iPhone 17.
Rest assured, the other features of Siri AI will still be available to you – including personal context, onscreen awareness, web answers, the dedicated Siri app, Visual Intelligence, and Writing Tools – since the iPhone 17 has 8GB of unified memory, which is the minimum required memory amount for Apple Intelligence.
The new Siri AI features are available for developer testing. Siri AI will be available as a beta later this year for users with a supported device set to English, and Apple will expand support for more languages at a later date.
