Apple rebuilding Siri
Apple is reportedly rebuilding Siri as a context‑aware, cross‑app assistant rather than a small add‑on, signaling a substantial architectural restart for voice intelligence (x.com). Insiders and observers say the revamp includes partnerships for larger language models — one public post ties Siri’s next version to Google Gemini as a possible backend — suggesting Apple plans deeper model integration, not just UI tweaks (x.com).
Apple spent June 2024 telling people Siri would soon understand what was on your screen and take actions across apps, like adding a texted address straight into a contact card. By March 2025, Apple had delayed those “more personalized Siri” features and said they would arrive “in the coming year” instead of on the original schedule. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) That delay matters because old Siri was built like a command menu: set a timer, send a text, play a song. The version Apple previewed was supposed to work more like a staff assistant that remembers context, sees your screen, and moves between apps without making you repeat every step. (apple.com) Now the reporting says Apple is not just patching Siri’s old system. Bloomberg reported on March 24, 2026 that Apple is testing a standalone Siri app and an “Ask Siri” feature that works across its software as part of a broader artificial intelligence overhaul tied to iOS 27 and macOS 27. (bloomberg.com) That is a much bigger job than changing the voice or adding a chatbot box. A cross-app assistant has to know that the restaurant in your messages, the calendar invite in your mail, and the map route on your screen are all part of one request. (apple.com) (bloomberg.com) Apple’s first plan was to do more of this itself. 9to5Mac reported on January 25, 2026 that Apple had been working on a “World Knowledge Answers” project to compete with tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity before scaling that effort back and moving toward Google’s Gemini instead. (9to5mac.com) That shift tells you where Apple hit the wall. It is one thing to build small on-device features like rewriting a sentence or summarizing a notification, and another thing to run a general-purpose model that can reason across open-ended requests, web results, and multiple apps in real time. (apple.com) (9to5mac.com) The Google part is no longer just rumor from anonymous posts. Bloomberg reported on November 5, 2025 that Apple planned to use a 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini model from Google to help power the Siri overhaul, and 9to5Google reported on January 12, 2026 that Apple had officially adopted Gemini as the backbone for the upgraded Siri coming later in 2026. (bloomberg.com) (9to5google.com) Apple is also widening the door beyond one outside model. Bloomberg reported on March 26, 2026 that Apple plans to open Siri to rival artificial intelligence assistants in iOS 27, extending the idea it already started with ChatGPT into a broader platform strategy. (bloomberg.com) So the rebuild is really two changes at once. Siri is being turned from a narrow voice feature into a system layer that sits across Apple’s apps, and Apple is increasingly willing to let outside models supply the heavy reasoning that its own software could not ship on time. (bloomberg.com 1) (bloomberg.com 2) (9to5google.com) If Apple pulls it off, the visible change on an iPhone will look simple: fewer rigid commands, more one-shot requests, and more tasks completed without app-hopping. The less visible change is the larger one: after years of treating Siri like a built-in feature, Apple now appears to be rebuilding it as the front door to everything else on the device. (apple.com) (bloomberg.com)
