Hey Siri, Time for that Lobotomy
This past January, I tempted fate. I wrote a headline in the style of Betteridge's law even though I was pretty certain the answer was, in fact, "yes": Should Apple Switch Off Siri? My argument in that piece was that Apple should shut down their internal version of Siri in order to rebuild her from the ground up and in the meantime, outsource her brain to ChatGPT. As I wrote:
And so I ask again: should Apple switch off Siri? Given the aforementioned OpenAI deal, why not fully outsource Siri to ChatGPT? You'd still want to keep the task-oriented elements – setting timers, etc – with her, but everything that requires anything resembling a search query should be outsourced. Right now, you can force this by asking Siri to ask ChatGPT something, but it's cumbersome, I'm suggesting this be made the default action.
By March, with news of yet another delay of an actual useful Siri from 2026 until 2027, I had see enough. This time, there was no question mark: Apple Should Swap Out Siri with ChatGPT.
And, well, here we are. As Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg today:
Apple is considering using artificial intelligence technology from Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri, sidelining its own in-house models in a potentially blockbuster move aimed at turning around its flailing AI effort.
The iPhone maker has talked with both companies about using their large language models for Siri, according to people familiar with the discussions. It has asked them to train versions of their models that could run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for testing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.
While no decision has been made one way or another yet, and work continues on Apple's own internal models for "LLM Siri", this change could happen as early as next year. So why the change of heart? Well, the change of leadership:
The project to evaluate external models was started by Siri chief Mike Rockwell and software engineering head Craig Federighi. They were given oversight of Siri after the duties were removed from the command of John Giannandrea, the company’s AI chief. He was sidelined in the wake of a tepid response to Apple Intelligence and Siri feature delays.
Rockwell, who previously launched the Vision Pro headset, assumed the Siri engineering role in March. After taking over, he instructed his new group to assess whether Siri would do a better job handling queries using Apple’s AI models or third-party technology, including Claude, ChatGPT and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini.
That must have been a fun test. But interestingly, it was not ChatGPT, but apparently Claude that won this particular bake-off:
After multiple rounds of testing, Rockwell and other executives concluded that Anthropic’s technology is most promising for Siri’s needs, the people said. That led Adrian Perica, the company’s vice president of corporate development, to start discussions with Anthropic about using Claude, the people said.
Beyond any technical hold-ups, there's clearly some worry about the message that switching to third-party services would send internally. While Siri has been a mess for a long time, Apple obviously has great talent on their teams, it has clearly been more of a strategy and leadership issue.
On the technical side, it sounds like the biggest hurdle may be getting these third-party models to run on Apple's own "Private Cloud Compute" servers, so that Apple can maintain some credibility on the data security front while outsourcing this work. And Apple would continue using their own models on local devices (though it sounds like OpenAI pitched Apple on this idea too).
But the biggest hold-up?
While discussing a potential arrangement, Apple and Anthropic have disagreed over preliminary financial terms, according to the people. The AI startup is seeking a multibillion-dollar annual fee that increases sharply each year. The struggle to reach a deal has left Apple contemplating working with OpenAI or others if it moves forward with the third-party plan, they said.
A "multibillion-dollar annual fee" let alone one that "increases sharply each year" is probably a bridge too far for Apple. This is a company whose largest M&A deal ever was $3B (for Beats, just over a decade ago). Can you see Apple paying Anthropic – in which Amazon and Google have huge stakes – more than that each year?
And Anthropic should want this contract, as they've struggled to gain traction with Claude versus ChatGPT. Then again, they're seemingly happy to cede that business and focus on coding, agents, and other elements of AI. So maybe they think such a deal only makes sense if Apple makes it worth their while.
That potentially puts OpenAI right back in the driver seat. Perhaps Apple could strike a deal that sees them invest in the company – for real this time.
And perhaps that would set up an unveil that I dreamed up for WWDC 2025, but instead at WWDC 2026:
Can't you just hear them say something like that on stage at WWDC in a few months?
"The response to ChatGPT integration inside of Apple Intelligence has been amazing. So amazing that we're extending the partnership to bring ChatGPT integration even deeper into Siri with [pause for dramatic effect] SiriGPT."
At first, this could be mainly powered by ChatGPT – maybe Apple would couch it a bit, noting that it was a hybrid of their own models and OpenAI's, again, much like Amazon is doing with Alexa+ – but over time, this could slowly morph. Again, perhaps they start to offer other models behind the scenes and seamlessly route queries (which would also ensure they're future-proofed and not putting all their eggs in one basket). And over time, Apple's own models – which they clearly need at this point, even if distilled from others – take over most of the Apple Intelligence workload. But it all starts with ChatGPT giving Siri that lobotomy.
Boom. Ship it.
We're closer than ever to that happening it seems.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler