Apple’s new AI dictation feature in iOS 27 is available as a preview on supported devices, but users need to turn it on manually in the first developer beta. The feature brings better accuracy, improved punctuation, and more reliable capitalization on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air.
Apple says the upgraded dictation system runs on AFM 3 Core Advanced, a 20-billion-parameter AI model designed to work directly on the device. Since the model runs locally, users get the same transcription quality with or without an internet connection.
The new dictation model improves how the iPhone understands speech while users speak naturally. It handles pauses, sentence structure, punctuation, casing, and meaning more accurately than Apple’s current dictation system.
Apple’s internal testing found that users preferred the new AFM 3 Core Advanced dictation system over the older production version by 44.7% to 17.6% for overall quality.
However, Apple has limited the preview to newer hardware because the model needs more memory and processing power. Supported devices include the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, M5 Vision Pro, newer iPads with at least 12GB RAM, and Macs with an M3 chip or later with at least 12GB RAM.
The standard iPhone 17 does not support the feature because it ships with 8GB RAM. Apple has not confirmed whether the AI dictation preview will stay off by default when iOS 27 launches publicly later this year.
