Siri gets a memory in iOS 27.2, plus one switch to limit what it sees

Apple shipped its 27.2 updates across iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS, and the release is mostly about Siri AI, which arrived in the iOS 27 wave (iOS 27 launch). The assistant can now recall past conversations and draw on more personal sources, including photos attached in Messages, Calendar attendees, voicemails, and Safari history and Reading List. Apple paired that with a new Excluded Apps setting that lets people choose, in one place, which apps Siri, Search and suggestions can access.

Other changes: Photos and Image Playground support SynthID watermarking to help identify images generated or modified with generative tools; FaceTime can add a third-party sign language interpreter or live captioner to a call; and the release brings a new Apple Music logo, Apple Pencil support on the iPhone Duo foldable and profiles in the Apple TV app. Beta builds of macOS 27.2 referenced new gesture recognition in Photos, Notes and Safari, which Ars Technica notes may relate to unconfirmed reports of touch support on a coming MacBook Pro. Siri AI requires an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max or any iPhone 16 model and later.

An assistant that remembers the restaurants it suggested last week or pulls an attendee list from an invite saves small amounts of time all day, which is useful AI rather than a demo. Apple’s pitch has always been that it can do personal-context work more carefully than rivals, and a single control panel fits that.

Memory changes the relationship, though. Once an assistant remembers conversations and reads voicemails, the question is not only whether answers are good but what is retained, for how long, and how easily it can be seen and erased. The update notes describe what Siri can recall without spelling out retention details. Excluded Apps is a list of what Siri cannot touch, which implies broad access is the starting point. That is defensible, since an assistant with no context is not much of one, but it puts the burden on users to find the setting. Across a billion-plus devices, defaults will decide more about privacy than any policy page, a concern raised as always-on features spread across devices (always-on devices).

SynthID support is a small but concrete contribution to provenance on a huge consumer platform, and the FaceTime interpreter feature is a real accessibility gain. Geography tells its own story: Siri AI adds French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish but remains unavailable in the EU and mainland China. Whatever the reasons, the most personal version of Apple’s AI is not shipping everywhere. Meanwhile rivals are reaching into Apple’s platforms, such as Gemini navigation on CarPlay (Gemini on CarPlay). More in our AI coverage.