Insider Reveals How Apple Might Win The AI Race With An Upgraded Siri

Following Apple's announcement that the long-awaited Siri overhaul would be postponed, we might finally have an idea about when to expect the company's personal assistant to challenge the likes of ChatGPT. More importantly, it's not just about getting smarter, but finally achieving Apple's vision of what Siri should actually be: a useful personal assistant.

While consumers expected Siri to tap into information from your messages, podcasts, and more –- after all, that's how Apple promoted Apple Intelligence during its WWDC 2024 keynote -– Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes that what will make the company's offering stand out, even if it should have happened much earlier, is an upgraded version of the App Intents technology.

This API is what allows Siri to access information from Apple's own apps, but also from third-party apps. Upgrading that technology is key to opening the door to asking Siri to "find the photo of me smiling at a restaurant in Paris" or "remove a person in the background of that photo near Big Ben in London."

While engineers are having a hard time putting it all together, Gurman believes the all-new Siri is "the fulfillment of the vision promised nearly 15 years ago." The journalist says Apple is aiming for a spring release, which continues to align with his previous report of a March launch.

However, to make this release successful, Apple will need serious help from app developers, and this is where the App Intents API enters the equation. Currently, Gurman reports that Apple is testing how Siri could integrate with apps like Uber, Amazon, YouTube, AllTrails, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more. If this works out, that would mean you could use Siri to book an Uber ride, buy something from Amazon, write a happy birthday message on Facebook, or find the podcast your friend recommended a few weeks ago on WhatsApp.

This would bring Siri much closer to Apple's original vision for the personal assistant. While OpenAI, Google, X, and Meta want their AI chatbots to answer big questions and create stunning images, Apple might be able to give users what they really want: something that will change how they use the iPhone by making the experience as familiar as starting a conversation.

Bloomberg also reports that Apple is being careful about integrating the App Intents API into health and banking apps. "There are worries about the software failing in categories where precision is nonnegotiable, like in health or banking apps," the report explains. "For years, users have struggled with Siri not understanding them. It's annoying but not critical if your phone misunderstands the city you want a weather report from or tries to navigate you to the wrong restaurant. But letting the Siri brain of today control all of your apps would obviously be a lot riskier."

This is why Gurman thinks Apple could follow a more conservative path and exclude those categories from Siri's future capabilities. As an example, the company removed Siri's ability to summarize news app notifications during the iOS 18.2 beta cycle, and it's only bringing it back with iOS 26, several months later.

The journalist reports that Apple also wants to give Siri a new voice-first interface. Ultimately, a successful release could lead to Apple's new ecosystem of smart home products, and fundamentally change the company's products to take a more futuristic, hands-free approach. Based on reports like these, it seems we will be able to see a glimpse of that as soon as next spring.