Apple will give iPhone users the ability to choose whether to delete AI-Powered Siri chats in iOS 27, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Here’s what that means.
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Apple’s privacy credentials have always been a unique selling point. While the iPhone maker has been slow to embrace artificial intelligence, what it has released has included clear privacy measures, such as its Private Cloud Compute, which offers high grade security and privacy to users.
So it’s no surprise that Apple is taking a privacy-focused approach with Siri when it is upgraded in iOS 27, with announcements coming at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Yet one reliable report claims to have specifics about what Apple’s privacy-enhanced intelligent Siri could look like.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the new Siri app in iOS 27 will auto-delete conversation history. “On the Messages app, you can set your conversation history to automatically delete after 30 days or a year, or leave them indefinitely,” he wrote, adding that the same options will exist in the new Siri app.
The ability to auto-delete interactions is exciting stuff because in addition to other privacy-enhancing measures, it’ll make Siri a very private chatbot compared to some rival offerings such as Google’s Gemini itself and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apple’s agreement with Google to use Gemini to power Siri already states that the iPhone maker’s chatbot will not be used to train the model.
The turbo-charged Siri will run on-device as much as possible, with Private Cloud Compute used when necessary, meaning it will be handled by Apple, rather than Google’s servers.
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ChatGPT states that while you can delete chats, you need to do so manually, or they can be auto-deleted after a set period. Google’s Gemini gives you options to auto-delete from three months.
Apple’s auto-delete feature in Siri could therefore make it stand out, despite the fact the iPhone maker is behind with its AI offering. Good privacy offers control, which is what Apple appears to be doing.
Yet while this is a great move, some experts think Apple should go one step further.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET says the new Siri feature is “so important as more people are using AI for personal chats, such as therapy and legal advice, without giving a thought about their privacy.”
But features like this “really need to remain on by default rather than being an add on,” says Moore. “Apple is clearly pushing privacy over intelligence which is a part of the core brand message and hopefully others will follow suit,” Moore adds.
Yet it’s also important to note that more privacy comes with less functionality. As 9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy writes, AI chatbots learn from the history of chats, and that context can be extremely useful in future interactions.
He thinks it’s a positive thing that the option will be available — but says: “I won’t be enabling it myself. That’s because Claude is my current AI of choice, and I’ve trained it both explicitly and implicitly to reflect my own preferences.”
There’s always the option to manually delete individual chats if you have concerns about Siri retaining sensitive data from particular sessions, he says.
Lovejoy makes a very good point and it will come down to how much iPhone users value privacy over personalised functionality. But the most important aspect is choice and control over Siri data, which is rare in the new world of AI.
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