Siri AI Beta Adds Five More Languages

Apple’s Siri AI, the rebuilt version of its voice assistant, now works in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish as well as English. The expansion arrived on 26 October with the 27.2 updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and visionOS, and Siri AI remains a beta.

The update keeps the restrictions Apple set out when Siri AI launched in English on 14 September. Siri AI is still unavailable on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch in the European Union, is not offered to users under 13, and is subject to daily usage limits. Apple says it will charge for expanded access in future.

In brief

Siri AI now supports French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, in beta, with the 27.2 software updates.
Apple says Chinese (traditional), Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese will follow by the end of the year.
Siri AI is still unavailable on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch in the EU, and Apple’s release notes say it is not available in mainland China.

Five languages added, four more promised by year end

In its announcement, Apple said that “with the 27.2 software updates released today”, Siri AI “is expanding to more people around the world, with availability now in the French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish languages”. It added that “availability in Chinese (traditional), Norwegian, Turkish, and Vietnamese” is “coming by the end of the year”.

Apple had flagged the first five languages at launch. Its 14 September announcement said Siri AI “begins rolling out today in beta in English, and will expand to French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish next month”. Apple’s developer site shows the 27.2 releases went out on 26 October at 10:00 Pacific time, 17:00 GMT.

To use it, Apple says a person needs “an Apple Intelligence-enabled device set to a supported language”. Apple’s iOS 27.2 release notes list the iPhone models as all iPhone 16 models and later, plus iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple’s Siri AI support page says turning the feature on adds users to a waitlist, and “wait times can vary”.

New features arrive alongside the languages

The release notes for iOS 27.2 also add features. Apple says Siri AI “can recall your past conversations, so you can ask Siri about something it told you before, like the restaurants it recommended last week”. It can also “draw from more sources to give you a great answer, including photos attached in Messages, Calendar event attendees, your voicemails, and better results from Safari history and Reading List”.

Two privacy and usability controls are new. A setting called Excluded Apps “lets you choose which apps Siri, Search, and suggestions can access, all from one setting”, and granular text selection lets users copy just part of a Siri answer.

Apple describes Siri AI as “a completely reimagined version of Siri” built on Apple Intelligence. It uses personal context from messages, emails and photos, can take actions inside apps and can answer questions about what is on screen, a capability TSN looked at in March. In September Apple said the underlying models were “custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models” and run on devices and on its Private Cloud Compute servers.

The EU, children and heavy users still face limits

Apple’s announcement repeats that “Siri AI is currently unavailable in the EU in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS”, and says Apple “is working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward”. Apple’s support page says EU residents can use Siri AI on macOS and visionOS if their device and Siri language are set to English. The iOS 27.2 release notes add that Siri AI “is not available in the EU or mainland China”. That matches what TSN reported when Tim Cook said the first Apple Intelligence features had been approved in China, without Siri AI.

Apple also says “Siri AI is not available for users under 13”. Features that rely on server-side models, Siri AI among them, are “subject to daily usage limits”, which Apple says “may vary by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors”. It adds: “Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future.” Apple has not said what that will cost or when charging will begin.

Apple is widening Siri AI faster than it is lifting restrictions

Adding five major languages six weeks after launch takes Siri AI well beyond English speakers, to users in markets such as Japan and South Korea and to Spanish, Portuguese and French speakers outside Europe. Apple also kept the timetable it set in September, when it said these languages would follow “next month”.

The constraints have not moved, though. Spanish, French and Portuguese are major languages inside the EU, yet speakers there still cannot use Siri AI on an iPhone. Mainland China is excluded too. Every new user also comes under daily limits on the server-side features that do the heavy lifting, and Apple has now said twice that more access will cost money, without giving a price. Wider language support increases demand on exactly the cloud capacity that those limits ration.

The label also still matters. Siri AI is a beta with a waitlist, and Apple has not said when it will drop that status. As Apple ships new hardware such as the iPhone Duo and an OLED iPad mini, the next signs to watch are whether the four promised languages arrive by December, whether the EU talks produce an iPhone launch, and what Apple charges for expanded use.