The Siri pane is where you configure Siri AI, and where you can check whether Siri AI is engaged at all.
The settings you can configure are:
- Requests: This setting determines what name(s), if any, Siri listens for. Click or tap this and select “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” “Hey Siri,” or Off.
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Language: Select the language Siri uses for both listening and speaking. Initially, only English is supported for Siri AI, though Apple plans to add more languages over time. As a result, if you set language to anything other than English, your device reverts to the old Siri—with the old icon—rather than Siri AI, with the new icon.
Your Siri language and your system language must also match exactly, which is covered in how to turn on the new Siri.
- Voice: It has long been possible to choose among various male- and female-sounding voices and even different dialects, and Siri AI adds even more choices. But now, you can also adjust Siri’s speed and expressiveness. If you want a zippy, flat, “just the facts” response; a relaxed, cheerful response; or anything in between, you can go to Settings > Siri on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Siri on a Mac, and click or tap Voice. On this pane, you can select a base voice and then drag the Pace and Expressivity sliders as sample responses are played to dial in exactly the tone you prefer.
This feature requires more advanced chips than are needed for Apple Intelligence. See the requirements for expressive voices.
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Responses: You have two choices as to how Siri responds to requests:
- Spoken Response: Siri speaks responses when you speak to Siri, but provides textual responses when you type to Siri.
- Silent Response: Siri almost always provides textual responses. But note that even with this setting, Siri speaks responses if you’re driving or wearing headphones—and possibly in other limited situations.
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Siri App: The following three settings apply to the Siri app:
- Opens To: Select what appears when you open the app: either Recent Conversations or A New Conversation.
- Keep Conversations: Select 30 Days, 1 Year, or Forever. Note that there’s no longer a Delete Siri & Dictation History button, though you can manually delete any or all of the history items in the Siri app.
- Preview: Select None or 1–5 lines.
To control Siri conversation syncing across your devices, go to Settings > Your Name > iCloud on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Your Name > iCloud on a Mac, then tap See All, followed by Siri. You can disable Sync this Device (enabled by default). The Keep Conversations setting is synced with the main Siri retention setting: change it here, and it’s changed globally, not just for iCloud.
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ChatGPT: Click or tap ChatGPT to change options specific to this third-party AI engine:
- Use Extension: On by default, this lets Siri tap into OpenAI’s ChatGPT when you explicitly ask it to (see how to use ChatGPT with Siri AI and Image Playground). Turn it off, and the option to use ChatGPT disappears from other places in your operating system.
- ChatGPT Account: If you have a free or paid ChatGPT account, you can click Sign In and provide your credentials, in which case your account is used for all ChatGPT requests. Read how to use ChatGPT with Siri AI for the privacy implications.
- Capabilities: Requests and Image Creation via ChatGPT have advanced capabilities, but only up to a point; if you exceed your daily limit, you go back to restricted access for 24 hours. The labels next to Requests and Image Creation let you know what’s available to you at this moment.
- Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus: If you don’t already have a paid ChatGPT account, you can click this button to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for $24.99 per month, which removes the daily limits described above, but with a privacy trade-off.
- Voice: If you want Siri to use a different voice for responses that come from ChatGPT than your usual Siri voice, click Choose, select Custom, and choose the accent and voice you prefer.
- Automatic Visual Look Up: This switch is labeled “Identify objects and places that appear in screenshots.” However, we’re currently unsure what effect this is intended to have, as we are seeing Visual Intelligence hints in screenshots regardless of whether this switch is turned on. We’ll discuss this in an update to this book if and when we learn how it works.
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App Access: Use these controls to determine which apps Siri can access. (Everything is turned on by default.) Click or tap an app, and then use the switches to turn the features on or off:
- Learn from this application: When this is on, Siri collects data about how you use the app to be used in suggestions elsewhere.
- Show Siri Suggestions: A limited number of (mostly Apple) apps have another switch, the wording of which may vary, that you can use to determine whether suggestions from Siri show up in this app. Note that the wording (for example, “Suggestions from Messages” and “Allow suggestions and content from this app to appear in Search, Look Up, and on the Lock Screen”) makes it sound as though the switch controls whether content from this app appears in other apps, which may also be true, but that’s not the primary function of the switch.
- Turn Off Siri: Unlike in the previous two generations of Apple’s operating systems, you can no longer disable Apple Intelligence completely, and if you want to disable Siri (along with portions of Apple Intelligence), you must scroll to the bottom of the pane, click or tap the red Turn Off Siri button, read a long description of all the things that will stop working if you do, and then click or tap Turn Off Siri.
Even if you turn off Siri, “Visual Intelligence will continue to work but with more limited capabilities,” though Apple doesn’t spell out what those limitations are, and other Apple Intelligence features such as Write/Edit with Siri, Image Playground, and Shortcuts continue to work. All this is Apple’s heavy-handed way of pushing these new features, even if you actively dislike them and don’t ever want to use them.
One thing you might be surprised not to see here is a setting for the keyboard shortcut that invokes Siri on a Mac (see how Siri AI and Spotlight merged). Although you can change the Spotlight keyboard shortcut and the shortcuts used for Siri screenshots (in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight and Screenshots, respectively), there’s no evident way to change the Siri shortcut to anything else.
