Mark Gurman, last week in Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. plans to open Siri to outside artificial intelligence assistants, a major move aimed at bolstering the iPhone as an AI platform.
The company is preparing to make the change as part of a Siri overhaul in its upcoming iOS 27 operating system update, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The assistant can already tap into ChatGPT through a partnership with OpenAI, but Apple will now allow competing services to do the same.
This is not unexpected. In the Apple Intelligence introduction at WWDC 2024, Craig Federighi said “we want you to be able to use these external models without having to jump between different tools”, and that they were “starting” with ChatGPT. Gurman points this out and also notes Federighi’s teased Google Gemini integration. Tim Cook, in an October 2025 earnings call, said much the same. (Gurman also notes that this integration is “separate from Apple’s work with Google to rebuild Siri using Gemini models”, but “the news initially weighed on shares of Google”, which I am sure is exactly the reason for them dropping 3.4% and nothing to do with an existing weeklong slide but, then again, I do not work at Bloomberg so who the hell am I to say?)
Gurman, in his “Power On” newsletter over the weekend, further explored what he calls Apple “doubl[ing] down” on a “revamped A.I. and Siri strategy”:
That reality is shaping the company’s new approach, set to be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8. Rather than engaging in an AI arms race, Apple is focusing on its core strengths: selling highly profitable hardware and making money off the services that run on it.
Historically, Apple’s software — iMessage, Maps and Photos, for example — has been about driving product sales rather than generating revenue in their own right. Rivals, in contrast, are aggressively monetizing AI through subscriptions and premium apps. Apple understands that few, if any, users will pay for Siri or its other AI technology. The opportunity to turn Apple Intelligence into a moneymaker has effectively passed.
What would have been more newsworthy here is if Apple’s A.I. strategy were anything other than building software exclusively for its proprietary hardware. This does not sound like a “revamped” strategy; it sounds like Apple’s whole deal. If it can use Apple Intelligence or Siri in the future, it certainly might; it is putting ads in Apple Maps after all. Services is a money-printing machine with less risk. But it is still a hardware company.
This part made me double-take and wonder if I missed something. In February 2024, following Apple’s cancellation of its car project, Gurman predicted that hardware would continue to be Apple’s primary business “for now”, as though that will change in the near future. This has been constant since Apple Intelligence was announced at WWDC that year.
What one could argue has been a change of strategy is the rumoured development of a chatbot; Gurman called it a “strategic shift” when he broke the news. But that, too, is somewhat inaccurate in two ways: Gurman’s description of it is as an overhauled version of Siri that will let people do normal Siri stuff — setting timers, end of list — plus some of the features Apple announced in 2024 but has not yet shipped which, confusingly, were also first set to ship in an update to iOS 26 without the wholly new version of Siri but also depending on Gemini. Got it?
But even that is not much of a strategy shift. Gurman tweeted in May 2024 — before WWDC and the debut of Apple Intelligence — that “Apple isn’t building its own chatbot but knows the market wants it so it’s going elsewhere for it. It’s the same playbook as search.” So, again, it is just borrowing from its ages-old playbook. It will continue to have proprietary stuff that ostensibly works seamlessly across a user’s Apple-branded hardware, allow installation of third-party add-ons, and rely on Google for some core functionality. How, exactly, is this a “revamp”?
Anyway, here is what Gurman wrote in January after the Gemini announcement and before the first build of iOS 26.4 was released:
Today, Apple appears to be less than a month away from unveiling the results of this partnership. The company has been planning an announcement of the new Siri in the second half of February, when it will give demonstrations of the functionality.
Whether that takes the form of a major event or a smaller, tightly controlled briefing — perhaps at Apple’s New York media loft — remains unclear. Either way, Apple is just weeks away from finally delivering on the Siri promises made at its Worldwide Developers Conference back in June 2024. At long last, the assistant should be able to tap into personal data and on-screen content to fulfill tasks.
Apple today shipped the first build of iOS 26.5 to developers without any sign of those features. While they may come in a later build, Juli Clover, of MacRumors, speculates they have been kicked to iOS 27.
Does not seem like much has changed at all.