Apple’s new AI-powered dictation promises to make talking to your iPhone feel fundamentally different, but if you're running the first developer beta of iOS 27, you won't experience it out of the box. Developers and early adopters must dive into the settings to manually enable what could be one of the most practical upgrades in years.
This advanced dictation is a key pillar in the new Apple Intelligence system. Apple claims it delivers a "major boost in accuracy," with far more reliable on-the-fly capitalization and punctuation. The feature is a key part of Apple's system-wide AI ambitions, the central theme of its developer conference earlier this month.
Under the Hood: The AFM 3 Core Advanced Model
The performance gains appear substantial. In side-by-side human evaluations against the previous system, the new AFM 3 model was preferred on overall quality by a commanding margin of 44.7% to 17.6%.
This preference held true across all six other quality dimensions tested, including punctuation, casing, layout, and capturing the user's intended meaning.
Hardware Limitations and Device Exclusions
The processing demands of the new model mean this upgraded dictation is limited to a select group of newer, more powerful devices. Notably, the standard iPhone 17 is left out, as its 8GB of RAM is below the 12GB minimum.
- iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max
- iPhone Air
- Vision Pro with M5 chip
- iPads with an M4 chip or later (with at least 12GB of RAM)
- Macs with an M3 chip or later (with at least 12GB of RAM)
This same on-device model also powers other new features, like Apple's customizable expressive Siri voices, which are similarly an opt-in preview. It's still unclear whether Apple will flip the switch to make advanced dictation a default setting later in the beta cycle or if it will remain optional for the public release of iOS 27 this fall.