Ultimate Siri AI Guide: How to Use Apple Intelligence for Beginners
A 15-minute walkthrough of the new Siri on iPhone and Mac: setup, the chat app, searching your own messages, seeing your screen, and acting inside apps.
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
The new Siri behaves like a chatbot that can see your screen and search your own messages, so setup takes minutes and the real skill is asking clearly and checking its work.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
An iPhone or Mac owner who never used Siri for more than timers and wants to know what the new version can actually do.
Someone who already uses ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude and wants to know how Siri compares and where it plugs into Apple apps.
A person who wants a short setup checklist: voice settings, message languages, the ChatGPT toggle and cross-device sync.
SKIP IF…
You want benchmark data behind the claim that Siri beat Gemini. The video states it but shows no test.
You build voice assistants or agents. The Siri sections are consumer-level and the rest is sponsor and course promotion.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Apple's new Siri can be called by voice, side button, or a typed swipe from the Dynamic Island, and every answer can open into a searchable chat in the new Siri app that syncs to the Mac through iCloud. It keeps context across follow-ups, works multi-step math and day plans, searches your messages, mail, photos and music, reads whatever is on your screen, and takes actions in apps such as drafting a text for your approval. Quality depends on giving context, a goal and a format. It is still a beta, so check anything it sends, buys or books, and treat image, translation and photo-edit output with care.
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“A vague request gets you a vague answer, and a request with some context, a clear goal, and the format you want back gets you something you can actually use.”
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After years of promises, Apple finally released Siri AI. And in a recent comparison, it beat Gemini on most tasks. It can find information in your messages and emails, understand what's on your screen, and handle tasks across apps.
By the end, you'll know how to set up Siri AI to work for you and which tasks you can actually hand over to it. Let's get into it. There are three ways to bring Siri up on the iPhone.
The first is your voice. You say Siri or Hey Siri, and you choose which one it listens for in settings. The second is holding the side button, which still works even if you've turned voice activation off completely.
The third is the one worth getting used to. Swipe down from the dynamic island and a text field opens so you can type your question to Siri instead of saying it out loud, which is how you use it in a meeting or on the subway. Okay, we've covered how to call Siri, so now let's set it up.
Open settings and tap Siri. At the top, you choose how Siri gets activated. Siri, Hey Siri, or no voice activation at all, plus whether holding the side button opens it.
If you turn voice activation on, the phone asks you to say a few phrases so it learns your voice. Next is the voice itself. You can pick a different voice, and on some devices you can also change the pace and how expressive it sounds.
Not every device gets those controls, so if they're missing, you haven't skipped a toggle. Then decide how Siri answers you. It can reply silently with text on screen or speak back when you've spoken to it.
If you mostly type to Siri, silent replies keep it quiet when you're around other people. If people text you in more than one language, look for the setting for message languages. Say your Siri runs in English, but your parents write to you in Russian.
You add Russian there and Siri can read and work with those messages while it keeps listening and answering in English. ChatGPT lives in these settings as well. Siri can pass some requests to ChatGPT and you can sign in with your ChatGPT account if you have one.
You don't need an account for Siri to work, and if you'd rather Siri never sends anything to ChatGPT, you can switch it off right here. We'll come back to what that means for privacy near the end. When you ask Siri something, the answer shows up as a small card.
Swipe down on that card and it opens into a full conversation, so you can keep asking follow -ups. Tap the full screen button and you land in the new Siri app. The app is basically your chat history with Siri.
You can switch between a list and a grid of conversations and their search. Type dentist and the chat where you sorted out an appointment comes right back. Tap it and all the context is still there so you can ask what to bring to the visit without explaining the whole thing again.
You can also add files and photos to a chat. take a photo right from inside it, or switch on voice mode and just talk to Siri. So it works pretty much like the chatbots you already know, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.
Whichever one you use, this is going to feel familiar. Siri's fine for everyday tasks, but if you build your own assistant to read you a morning briefing, a standard voice reads a rescheduled meeting in the same tone as the weather forecast, so you tune it out. This part of the video is sponsored by Phish Audio, and their new model, Drama 3, lets you direct the vo - in plain English.
I put directions in brackets, like notes to a voice actor, and send it through the Phish Audio API. Each one changes everything after it, even mid -sentence.
Wait, the first one just moved. It starts in 15 minutes. Wow, okay, that's really cool.
Same voice, same sentence, and the rescheduled meeting finally sounds urgent. Now a message from a co -worker. Drama 3 can generate a multi -speaker scene in one pass, so the assistant and the sender come out of one request.
Message from Dana. Can you send me the deck before the call? Want me to reply?
Nice. Two distinct voices. from one request.
Phish Audio also says Drama 3 keeps voices consistent across long, multilingual scripts, and that it ranked first on Artificial Analysis Pronunciation ReRubness Benchmark, with 93 .2 % of hard words, numbers, and codes read correctly. If you're building your own assistant, this is a cost -effective way to give it a voice with some personality.
Check out my link in the description. Sign up through my link, and you'll get 10 ,000 free web app credits and 50 % off all plans. also get 80 % off drama 3 via API just $10 per million characters for a limited time the new Siri knows a lot more about the world than the old one and it can work through a question in steps instead of handing you a list of web links for example ask how long a flight from New York to Denver takes then just say and what's the time difference You don't repeat the cities or the route, it keeps the context from the first question, the same way a chatbot does.
It handles math with a few moving parts too. Here's the kind of thing you can throw at it. Dinner for six comes to $210, we're tipping 20%, and one person only had a $14 drink and wants to pay for just that, so what does everyone else owe?
That's several numbers and one odd condition in a single sentence, and Siri has to work out the order of the steps. The numbers are made up for the demo, so plug in your own. For planning, ask for the whole day at once.
Plan my Saturday, I want a long hike in the morning, a late lunch near the trailhead, and I need to be home by six. You get a timeline, you can keep adjusting in the same chat.
And when Siri pulls facts from the web, it shows where they came from. Tap the source before you trust anything that costs you money or time, like store hours or a parking rule. This is the part the old Siri couldn't do at all.
Siri can now look through your own stuff, like messages, mail, photos, and music, and answer from it, so you don't have to remember which app something was in. When am I flying to Paris? Siri looks through messages and mail and gives you the answer itself, not a list of threads you'd have to read.
Then you follow up with, and what's the confirmation number? And it stays in the same conversation about the flight. Mail, you'd normally have to dig for, works the same way.
Photos are searchable by what's in them. Ask Siri to find your photos of the Eiffel Tower and it pulls them out of your library instead of you scrolling through hundreds of shots. Music works too.
Play the playlist I made for running last month is enough. You don't need the exact name. On the Mac, this goes a bit further because that's where a lot of your files live.
Siri can find a page you half remember from Safari, like the article about standing desks you were reading yesterday, and it searches your files and notes as well. It leans on the same kind of search Spotlight uses. So if Spotlight can find something, Siri can usually use it.
Once Siri is set up, the hard part is asking it well. The new Siri behaves like any chatbot.
A vague request gets you a vague answer, and a request with some context, a clear goal, and the format you want back gets you something you can actually use. Most people never learn that part, and it applies to every AI assistant you'll touch, not just Siri. That's what I built my platform, AI Master, for.
You can go much deeper into exactly this topic there, how to work with AI assistants and get results you can rely on. You also get courses that aren't on this channel and won't be published here. And the learning is personalized, so it's built around you rather than one generic track for everybody.
There are more than 200 lessons and over 30 hours of material. built -in, so you use a lesson right after you finish it. In the studio, you create content with the latest models, which keep getting updated.
The AI chat lets you work with AI on the same platform instead of paying for a pile of separate subscriptions. And the content agent helps you apply what you've learned to your own channel and videos. The plan to look at is the annual one.
It's better value than paying monthly, it comes with an annual token allowance for all that practice, and it gives you a full year to finish the courses and actually put them to work. There's also a seven -day money -back guarantee, so if it turns out it isn't for you, you get your money back.
More than 15 ,000 students are already learning there, and the link is in the description. Siri can see your screen when you call it from inside an app. Use your voice, the side button, or the swipe down from the dynamic island, and you hand Siri whatever you're looking at without screenshots or copy and paste.
You just ask about this, and it knows what this is. Say your flight confirmation is open in mail with the e -ticket attached as a PDF. You need one detail from it.
Call Siri and ask, how many checked bags do I get on this ticket? Siri reads the document and points you to the line with the baggage allowance. When it's something that can cost you money at the airport, I'd still read that line myself, but now you know where it is instead of scrolling through the whole PDF.
It also works in apps you'd never think of as Siri apps. Open any article in Safari. Call Siri and ask, give me the three main points of this page.
You get a short summary right on top of the article, and if one point sounds interesting, you ask a follow -up about just that part. On -screen awareness works from what Siri can see. If the detail you need is way down a long page, scroll to it first, or Siri may answer from the part that's visible.
Open the camera, and next to photo and video, there's now a Siri mode. Point it at something, and Siri tells you what it's looking at. Then you can ask about it.
by voice or by typing or run an image search. It works a lot like the camera in ChatGPT. You can aim it at almost anything and ask a question about it.
Say you're traveling and you run into a sign or a menu in a language you can't read. Point the camera at it and ask, what does this say? Siri translates it for you.
Or you're standing in front of a building or a statue and have no idea what it is. Take a photo and ask, what is this place? And what's the story behind it?
Then keep asking follow -ups, like when it was built or whether it's worth going inside. There's a faster way that's easy to miss. With the regular camera already open, hold the side button and just ask your question.
Siri takes the shot itself and answers about whatever's in the frame. Like any chatbot, It can get a translation slightly off or name the wrong landmark.
So when the answer matters, like a warning sign or a rule about where you can park, check it against the sign itself. Siri can now take actions inside apps instead of just opening them. You ask, and it goes through the taps you'd normally do yourself while you watch.
The simplest version stays in one app. Text my brother that I'm running 10 minutes late and ask him to save me a seat. Siri writes the message in Messages and shows it to you before it sends anything.
You approve it, and it's gone. Reminders can be tied to a place now too. When I get to the office, remind me to book the meeting room for Friday.
It goes off when you arrive, which is one more reason to keep places like home and work correct on your contact card. Rewriting text is one of the things Siri got noticeably better at, and on -screen awareness makes it quicker. Say you've typed an annoyed message to your neighbor about the noise last night.
Before you send it, call Siri and ask to make it polite and short, but keep the request to turn it down after 10. You read the new version and send that one instead. Siri also makes images now.
through Apple's Image Playground. Ask for a picture for a birthday invite, a rooftop with string lights and a long table, and you get a few options back. You can pick a style, change the aspect ratio, and then edit parts of the picture.
Circle the table and move it, or just describe the change in words. There's a wallpaper option too. Describe the colors or the mood you want, and when you like the result, you set it as your wallpaper right from there.
Genmoji got faster, and you can now combine more than one emoji into a single one a coffee cup and a rocket make a decent monday launch reaction for a work chat images are where ai mistakes are easiest to spot weird text on signs objects melting into each other that kind of thing for an invite in a group chat it doesn't matter much for anything that's supposed to look like a real photo look closely before you share it Now the Mac.
And the part I'd call the main trick of this video. Say you started planning a hike in a chat on the iPhone. On the Mac, you open the Siri app, and that same conversation is there, synced through iCloud.
Ask Siri to turn the plan into a principal checklist, split into gear, food, and timing, and it picks up exactly where the phone left off. Spotlight is now Siri in search. Press command and space, type a question instead of a file name, and Siri answers right in that window.
If you'd rather ask ChatGPT, right -click the search bar and switch to it. The right -click menu is where the Mac really pulls ahead of the phone. Select some text, a file, or an image in almost any app, right -click, and send it to Siri with a question.
Right -click the PDF manual of a coffee machine in Finder and ask how to descale it. Send a spreadsheet of your monthly subscriptions and ask which three cost the most. Or send a screenshot of a confusing internet plan and ask what you'd actually pay after.
to the first year. Visual Intelligence works on the Mac as well, just on your screen instead of through a camera. Press Command, Shift and 6, drag over the part of the screen you care about and ask Siri about it.
Select the delivery window on an order page and add it to your calendar. Select a map in an email and ask where that place actually is. If you also use iPhone mirroring or handoff, check how Siri behaves with them on your own setup before you rely on it.
The chat sync itself goes through iCloud, so you don't need either of them just to pick up a conversation on the Mac. You describe the extension you want in normal words, and Safari builds it in the background. Safari is where this gets interesting for people who've never built anything.
Small, specific ideas work best here, like hiding every product above a price you set, or highlighting the words free shipping on every page. You don't write any code, but test the result on a couple of pages before you trust it. Then there are the small helpers that just show up while you work.
In Calendar, you can type an event the way you'd say it. like dentist on tuesday between two and four and it fills in the details for you to check and messages now shows quick action buttons right in the conversation so a message with a date in it can turn into a calendar event or a reminder with one click photos on the mac got new ai editing tools too you can circle an object in a real photo not just a generated image and move it replace it or remove it taking a stray cable out of a shot of your desk is fine but if the photo is evidence say for an insurance claim or return.
don't edit anything because then the photo is no longer a record of what was actually there if you only do three things after this video start here set your my information card on both devices so home and my brother mean something to siri get used to type into siri with the swipe down from the dynamic island on the iphone and sirian search on the mac and sign into the same apple id on both so your chats follow you from one to the other the new siri can finally do real work especially when it can see your screen or search your own messages.
It's still a beta though, so check anything it's about to send, buy, or book. If you want to get better at working with AI assistants like this one, you'll find courses and practice at AI Master. See you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
After years of promises, Apple shipped a Siri that searches your messages, reads your screen and acts inside apps. This guide sets it up in minutes and shows which jobs to hand over and which answers to double-check.
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