Apple is speeding up its Siri roadmap. The goal is to turn the assistant into a real AI agent that can stand up to OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse. The Verge AI reports, citing Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that CEO John Ternus is pushing AI czar Craig Federighi to move faster, even though Federighi has already shipped a working Siri AI on a very tight timeline.
Apple knows it’s behind. According to Gurman, the company “has no illusions” that it’s keeping pace with its rivals.
⚡ Key points
- Coming soon: Siri gets fine-grained control over Apple’s own apps, expected with iOS 27.3.
- Spring: Siri starts working inside third-party apps like Grubhub and OpenTable.
- Possibly next year: Siri becomes a true agent that handles ongoing tasks instead of one-off commands.
- Why now: Pressure from the top, plus competitors that already ship agents with this kind of follow-through.
📱 Phase one: Siri learns Apple’s own apps
The first upgrade is narrow but useful. Siri will be able to act inside Apple’s first-party apps with more precision, like rotating and cropping an image in Photos or organizing your Safari tabs.
That sounds small. It isn’t. Until now, voice assistants have mostly worked at the surface level: open an app, set a timer, send a text. Editing a photo or rearranging tabs means Siri has to understand what’s inside an app and work it the way you would. That’s the groundwork everything else depends on.
🍽️ Phase two: third-party apps
Gurman says the bigger change will likely arrive in the Spring. That’s when Siri should be able to work with third-party apps, placing a Grubhub order or booking a table on OpenTable, for example.
This is where Apple’s position gets interesting. No AI lab has what Apple has: an installed base of devices and a whole developer ecosystem already living on your phone. If developers expose their app actions to Siri, Apple could get an agent that works across the apps people actually use, without the browser workarounds many rival agents depend on.
The catch is adoption. Third-party integration only works if developers sign up, and that usually takes time.
🤖 Phase three: a true agent
The long-term goal is a Siri that keeps working after you stop talking to it. Gurman describes what Apple is chasing:
“Dots, Muse and Grok can keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next and continue pursuing objectives without the user initiating every individual step.”
He adds that he believes Apple “could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year, not that it has much of a choice, given current consumer and market demands.”
That’s the real line between an assistant and an agent. An assistant waits for your next instruction. An agent holds onto a goal, plans the steps and keeps going until the job is done.
🧭 Why this matters
What stands out to me is how openly Apple is playing catch-up. For years, Apple’s approach was to arrive late with a polished version. That works for hardware. It’s a much harder bet in AI, where expectations change every few months and users are already getting used to agents that take action for them.
A few takeaways:
- Leadership is setting the pace. Ternus pushing Federighi directly tells you AI has moved to the top of Apple’s priority list.
- Apple’s edge is distribution. It doesn’t need the best model. It needs the most useful agent on the device people already carry.
- Privacy will be tested. An agent that orders food and books reservations needs access to payments, accounts and personal context. Apple’s privacy reputation is both an advantage and a constraint here.
🔮 What to watch
If you build iOS apps, expect pressure to expose your app’s actions to Siri, especially in food delivery, travel and reservations. If you’re a user, iOS 27.3 is the first real test of whether Siri can handle detailed work inside apps.
The bigger question is whether Apple can make Siri a true agent before people get used to doing that work in someone else’s app. Full details are in the original report from The Verge AI.