The iOS 27 AI leak: grammar checker, standalone Siri app and AI wallpapers

What the iOS 27 AI leak said

The leak came in two Bloomberg pieces published in the week of 17 May 2026: Mark Gurman's Sunday Power On newsletter and a full report the following day. Together they described the Apple Intelligence additions planned for iOS 27 in more detail than Apple had shared at that point.

The picture was not one headline feature. It was a set of targeted changes to writing, automation and personalization, built around a Siri that behaves more like a chat assistant. Apple announced iOS 27 at the WWDC keynote on 8 June 2026 and released iOS 27.0 on 14 September 2026, so everything below should be read as what was reported before launch. Apple's own announcements, collected in our full iOS 27 features list, are the reference for what actually shipped. The status column below follows that list: "Not confirmed" means the feature did not appear in the WWDC highlights we track, not that it can never arrive.

The reported grammar checker

The grammar checker was the feature most likely to be used every day. Bloomberg described a translucent panel that slides up from the bottom of the screen when the system thinks your writing needs work, showing your original sentence beside a suggested revision.

According to the report you could:

• approve a single suggestion
• accept every change at once
• ignore the suggestions
• pause the checker
• jump between flagged sections to review them in order

The difference from the existing Writing Tools is the kind of help on offer. Writing Tools rewrite, summarize or change the tone of a passage, which replaces your text. A grammar checker keeps your wording and corrects it, the same job Grammarly is paid for. The report named Messages and Mail. It did not say whether the checker would reach every text field in third-party apps, and that remained an open question. If you already use Writing Tools, our Apple Intelligence writing and editing guide covers what is available today.

"Write with Siri" and "Help Me Write" on the keyboard

Both were meant to fix a discoverability problem: many people never find Writing Tools because they sit inside a context menu.

• Write with Siri was described as a toggle directly above the keyboard, so Siri's writing help is one tap away while you type.
• Help Me Write was described as a prompt that appears when you invoke Siri while the cursor is in a text field. Press the side button mid-email and Siri would offer to help with the text instead of waiting for a general command.

Neither is a large technical change. Both put the feature where your attention already is, which tends to matter more for everyday use than the quality of the model behind it.

The standalone Siri app

The most significant item in the leak was a dedicated Siri app: a chat application on the Home Screen rather than a voice overlay. Bloomberg described separate chat threads, persistent history, file uploads and search across past conversations.

The report mentioned two layouts. One opens to a blank conversation; the other opens to a Messages-style list of earlier threads. The app could be reached with the side button, the wake word, or a new "Search or Ask" gesture from the top of the screen.

In practice that would let you hand Siri a PDF, ask follow-up questions about it and pick the conversation up the next day, which the current Siri cannot do. Earlier Gurman reporting, cited in the same coverage, said the new Siri would run partly on a custom model derived from Google's Gemini, with sensitive requests routed through Apple's Private Cloud Compute. Bloomberg noted that Apple had not said how much of the work Google's infrastructure would handle.

This part of the leak held up. Apple confirmed Siri AI in iOS 27 with memory of earlier requests, on-screen awareness, personal context and, for the first time, a standalone app.

Auto-deleting Siri chats

This was the design choice that set the reported Siri app apart from other chatbots. The app was said to borrow the history setting from Messages, with three options:

• keep conversations for 30 days
• keep them for one year
• keep them indefinitely

Bloomberg went further: chats you delete, manually or on the timer, would not be used as personalization memory. Gurman's newsletter also said Apple would place tighter limits on what Siri's memory could keep and for how long. Most assistants treat long history as the default and private chats as the exception. The reported Siri would flip that. It would also give Apple a simple answer to questions about how much data reaches Google's servers.

Why the new Siri was expected to carry a beta label

Bloomberg reported that internal iOS 27 test builds already labelled the new Siri as a beta and included a toggle to leave the Siri beta, and that the label might survive into the public release.

That is unusual for Apple, which normally ships features once they are finished. There is a precedent, though. The first Apple Intelligence features carried a beta tag after their public launch. A beta label on Siri would signal that Apple expected mistakes in everyday use and wanted to set expectations accordingly. How Apple actually presented Siri at launch is covered in the confirmed feature list rather than here.

Shortcuts built from plain English

The Shortcuts app is powerful and widely ignored because building an automation means dragging and nesting actions. The report said the iOS 27 version would open with a single prompt asking what you want your shortcut to do.

You would type a request such as "every weekday at 7am, send my partner a good morning message with today's weather", and the system would build and install the whole shortcut. Apple already knows every action and parameter Shortcuts supports, so translating a plain request into a sequence of actions is a natural fit for a language model. If it works, it turns Shortcuts from a power-user tool into something most people would try. Apple confirmed plain-English Shortcuts for iOS 27, so this is one report that made it to launch.

AI wallpapers in the wallpaper picker

Bloomberg said iOS 27 would add an AI generation option inside the standard wallpaper picker, the same screen you use to choose a stock wallpaper or a photo. It would be powered by an upgraded Image Playground and create custom Lock Screen and Home Screen backgrounds on the device.

The report also said Image Playground itself would get a visual refresh and improved models. Placement is the point: generating a wallpaper where you already pick one avoids a trip to a separate app.

Suggested Genmoji

Genmoji, Apple's custom emoji generator, did not catch on as Apple hoped. The leak described a second attempt: a keyboard toggle for Suggested Genmoji, created from your photos and the phrases you type most often, offered in the same way predictive text suggests words.

Bloomberg said the feature would be optional but that Apple would probably prompt people to switch it on after updating. As with the Write with Siri toggle, the idea is to surface the feature at the moment you might want it.

Which iPhones get these AI features

Bloomberg described all of these as Apple Intelligence features, and Siri AI, including the new Siri app, is confirmed as part of Apple Intelligence. On iPhone that needs an A17 Pro chip or newer. iOS 27 itself runs on more models than Apple Intelligence does.

If you own an iPhone 15 Pro or a later Apple Intelligence model, the Apple Intelligence features in this report apply to you as they arrive. A standard iPhone 15 or anything older gets the rest of iOS 27 but not Siri AI or the other Apple Intelligence tools. Our guide to iOS 27 on iPhone 15 explains that split in more detail.

What the report left unanswered

The Bloomberg coverage was detailed, but several questions were open when it was published:

• Languages. Apple Intelligence has expanded beyond English slowly, and the report did not say which languages the grammar checker or Help Me Write would support.
• Third-party apps. It was unclear whether the grammar checker would work in every text field or only in Apple's apps and apps that opt in.
• On-device or cloud. Private Cloud Compute was mentioned for Siri, but not which of these features would run locally.
• Genmoji quality. The report did not say whether Suggested Genmoji used an upgraded image model.
• The Siri app itself. Where the app would sit, whether it could be deleted and how it would coexist with the current Siri overlay were not described.

Apple's keynote answered some of these: the features list notes that Siri AI launched with English support due later in 2026 and more languages to follow. The Apple Intelligence availability guide covers devices and regions for the 27-series releases.

How to check the AI features on your own iPhone

The quickest way to see what made it into iOS 27 is to use it. iOS 27.0.1 (24A446) is the current public release. If you want the newest Apple Intelligence changes before they reach everyone, the iOS 27.2 beta track is open, with beta 4 (24B5110a) released on 13 October 2026.

1. Make an archived backup on a Mac or PC. A backup made on a beta cannot be restored to an older iOS version.
2. Open Settings › General › Software Update › Beta Updates.
3. Choose iOS 27 Public Beta or iOS 27 Developer Beta. Both are free with an Apple Account.
4. Go back to Software Update and install the beta.
5. Turn on Apple Intelligence under Settings › Apple Intelligence & Siri if your iPhone supports it.

The full process, including the public beta enrolment at beta.apple.com, is in our guide to downloading the iOS 27 beta.

What to do next

Use this page as the pre-launch record and the iOS 27 features list as the current picture. If your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence and the features are not appearing, the guide to enabling Apple Intelligence walks through the settings and download steps.

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