Apple pushes to turn Siri into an agent that rivals OpenAI's Dots
Bloomberg reported that CEO John Ternus is pressing for a faster Siri roadmap, with control of Apple's own apps among the next upgrades.
Summary
Apple CEO John Ternus is pushing AI chief Craig Federighi to speed up Siri's roadmap and build an agent to rival OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman wrote in his November 8 newsletter.
The push is an attempt to close a gap with rivals in agents, software that carries out multi-step tasks on a user's behalf. Federighi delivered a working version of Siri's AI on a very short timeline, but the company has no illusions that it is keeping pace with competitors, Gurman reported.
Two significant upgrades to Siri are expected in the coming months, according to Gurman. One would give the assistant fine-grained control over Apple's own apps, letting it rotate and crop images in Photos or organize tabs in Safari.
Gurman's newsletter also pointed to a shake-up of Apple's plans for iOS 28, a future version of the iPhone operating system.
Rival assistants are already moving into tasks that end in a transaction. Amazon began letting select US customers text Alexa to search for and buy products on November 6.
Siri first shipped on the iPhone 4S in 2011, and Apple announced its Apple Intelligence features in June 2024. Bloomberg reported on November 4 that Apple was cutting employees' budgets for internal AI usage as part of a cost-cutting effort, even as it seeks to put AI at the center of its operations.