Apple's intelligent assistant Siri has been an early success for the company, but in recent years it became a pain point as it lagged behind far more capable large language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company significantly improved Siri this year, rebranding the whole system Siri AI, but it's still not quite there yet.
This might change next year. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple's new CEO John Ternus is "pressing" Apple's software chief Craig Federighi to turn Siri into an AI agent that can take actions autonomously and perform a variety of tasks for users.
Bloomberg's report goes into the intricacies of the relationship between Ternus and Federighi, with the latter described as being an AI skeptic, while Ternus pushes for a more progressive approach to AI.
Bottom line for users is that Siri AI, while far more capable than last year's Siri, still isn't the type of assistant that you can just throw a bunch of (complex) tasks at and get back results. But next year's version should get a couple of advanced capabilities that will make it a powerful rival to other AI agents. The most important among these is the ability to tap into apps (both Apple's and third-party apps) and perform actions within them. Examples include asking Siri to book a table or order food, with the assistant autonomously performing the task through a service such as OpenTable or Uber Eats.
Siri should also get more precise control over Apple's own apps; for example, it could go into the Photos app, edit a photo, and then share it with someone, all on its own.
The part in which Siri gets more capable of performing tasks in Apple's apps might come "as early as December," with the public version of iOS 27.3 (the company recently launched the first iOS 27.3 beta). More advanced Siri capabilities inside third-party iOS apps won't arrive until spring 2027, and is likely to be launched with either iOS 27.5 or iOS 27.6, with a possible launch ahead of Apple's WWDC conference in June.
All of this still isn't enough to make Siri as capable as an agent like ChatGPT's Dots or Meta's Muse, which you can give a task (such as creating a website) and have them work on various tasks as they build and improve the project. Gurman believes Apple intends to launch such capabilities for Siri as early as next year. One example of that has already been announced during WWDC 2026: Siri's ability to find weak passwords tied to a user's Apple account and changing them autonomously on the appropriate websites and in the user's Passwords app.
Ultimately, Gurman argues, Apple can allow itself to be a bit more cautious about this as it controls the hardware and software of the devices itself, but rivals could start developing hardware of their own, which could take away Apple's most important market advantage.
