Siri on iOS 18 requires unlock for alarms and won't dictate for Shortcuts

Siri AI is worse...?

Hi everyone,

I was on iOS 18 until a few weeks ago, finally upgraded because some apps wouldn't update due to remaining on 18. I didn't turn on Siri AI until earlier this week and am finding some basic things I used to do with bog-standard Siri are no longer possible:

1. Set alarms with Siri. "Hey Siri, turn on the alarm for 5am". The response? You'll need to unlock your iPhone first. What the heck...? My old Siri did this perfectly well without needing me to unlock. Sometimes I ask what time the alarm is set for and it tells me to unlock the iPhone first. That it can't check my alarms without unlocking.

2. I had set up a shortcut using the Shortcuts app a couple of years ago. This would open up a group SMS and send a text. I set up a trigger word, e.g. 'football group'. So if I was driving, I'd say "Hey Siri, football group". It would open up the text message group and ask me what I'd like to say (which I would dictate), and then it'd send it. With this new Siri, it just opens up the text message group and expects me to type it. The whole point of this shortcut was to get Siri to do the leg work for me via dictation!

Am I doing something wrong? This stuff was perfectly fine before turning on Siri AI. I've even turned off Siri AI and gone back to standard Siri but my group text message shortcut won't work. It'll open the message and then reuire me to manually type instead of dictating.

Any tips or advice would be appreciate.

Thanks.