November 2, 2026
Apple announced the expansion of language support for its smart assistant, Siri AI, in the iOS 27.2 operating system update, a few months after the launch of its beta version. The update included the addition of French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Despite this step, which aims to improve the user experience, a report published by the American technical website “BGR” indicated that the update did not address the most prominent defects of the smart assistant, which is its inability to deal with more than one language during a single voice conversation, unlike competing chatbots.
The report explained that using “Siri” in English and then switching to another language requires complex steps that include entering the phone’s settings, choosing the new language from the assistant’s settings list, in addition to the necessity of setting the language of the “iPhone” device to the same language to avoid returning to the previous version. The assistant also needs to download artificial intelligence models for the new language on the device locally, which makes the transition process not instantaneous, given Siri’s inability to understand anything other than the pre-selected language during voice interaction.
On the other hand, the typing feature provides greater flexibility for users, as it allows switching between English, Portuguese, French, and other languages supported in the translation application, with the assistant being able to understand questions and respond in the language used. However, this flexibility remains limited. If Siri is asked to translate text into a language that is not supported locally, such as Hungarian, the model is unable to perform the task and is forced to search online instead of direct processing.
In terms of competition, robots such as OpenAI’s “GPT Chat” and Google’s “Gemini” excel with their high flexibility in dealing with multiple languages. It allows users to ask questions and switch between languages in the same conversation—whether in writing or voice—without having to change device or assistant settings, even if the phone’s primary language is English. On the other hand, using more than one language verbally with Siri leads to the interpretation of words according to the pre-selected language, which results in inaccurate answers or incorrect pronunciation of names and foreign names.
These restrictions negatively affect everyday practical tasks, such as playing songs with foreign names, providing directions while traveling, and managing appointments. The report concludes that Apple’s recent improvements represent a step forward, but they leave multilingual users with a limited experience, which puts the future of smart assistants to a real test compared to the fluidity offered by competing applications.
