All About Siri AI

"116 years old." That's what Siri AI guessed when host John Voorhees asked how old co-host Federico Viticci is, based on his contact card. The card didn't include a birth year, so the model hallucinated one — and then agreed sycophantically when John joked that Federico must just have a good skincare regimen. That moment captures the central tension of this episode of AppStories: Apple's new Siri AI is a genuine leap forward from the old Siri, but it is not the agentic tool that power users have come to expect from tools like OpenAI's Codex or Anthropic's Claude. The hosts walk through what Siri AI does well, where it falls short, and why managing expectations matters.

What Siri AI Is Actually Good At

Siri AI excels at two broad categories: world knowledge and in-app search within Apple's own system apps. For the first time, asking Siri a factual question no longer returns a list of web links. Instead, it provides a rich, visually formatted answer with photos, maps, and expandable details. John tested it by asking about a local restaurant in Charlotte and got a map, driving directions, a call button, and a link to the website. Federico found it reliably accurate for current events and sports — it knew Wimbledon wasn't over yet when asked, and within hours of a celebrity death, it had updated its answer and linked to the correct Apple News story.