SiriGPT: Apple's chiefs hope to add full chatbot functionality to Siri, eventually

Apple's executives are pushing for Siri to become a proper AI chatbot that scours the web, potentially as a direct competitor to ChatGPT. It's just not clear when that's going to happen.

As part of the Apple Intelligence shift, Apple said it would overhaul Siri to be more context-aware, but that change has yet to arrive. However, if the urges of Apple's chiefs to change course work, Siri could become even more powerful down the road.

According to Apple employees speaking to Bloomberg on Sunday, Apple executives are keen to make Siri into a competitor to current top chat bot, ChatGPT. While former Siri chief John Giannandrea was apparently reluctant to go down that route, the company's leadership are leaning to go that way with Siri.

Siri already has an integration with ChatGPT. Such a move could eliminate reliance on OpenAI's service for responses, and keep the queries in-house.

A chatbot that Apple has been reportedly testing internally for years has apparently done extremely well in the last six months. Employees claim that the internal bot is on a similar level to responses from ChatGPT.

Management has also talked about the possibility of letting the chat bot the option of scouring the Internet and use data from multiple sources to create answers to queries. This is similar to how many other chatbots work, expanding their existing knowledge graph with live data from elsewhere.

A Siri renaissance

Refocusing efforts on making Siri work with an Apple chatbot can be beneficial to Apple beyond just making Siri smarter.

For a start, a better and more powerful Siri that could answer search queries like ChatGPT could help offset some related costs. With Apple's $20 billion default search deal with Google in jeopardy, Apple has to do other things to make its hardware and software more attractive to new buyers, and the Siri overhaul could do the trick.

Another feature that was announced as coming to Siri but got delayed could also help. The feature of using Siri to work more deeply with apps on an iPhone could let Siri respond to queries and commands by triggering actions in apps on the user's behalf.

Such a feature would keep the App Store relevant and maintain its position as a $20 billion per year business. With the potential for chatbots to take over from apps in terms of general usage by iPhone owners, this functionality could still keep the app economy ticking over.

No song and dance

While the future may be bright for Siri, it's unlikely that Apple will crow about its plans at WWDC 2025, starting on June 9.

There are plans to talk about inbound changes to Apple Intelligence, including an AI-optimized battery management system. However, Siri updates are likely to be downplayed, even those seemingly months away from shipping.

Apple is also apparently preparing to separate Siri and Apple Intelligence for marketing purposes. Apparently, Siri's poor reputation is damaging that of Apple Intelligence.

As for when to expect the new Siri with chatbot smarts, don't count on hearing about it anytime soon. Apple has seemingly learned its lesson with the Apple Intelligence announcement, and now intends to avoid announcing new features more than a few months ahead of their intended launch.