Siri's revamp may come via OpenAI or Anthropic, not Apple

Apple might abandon plans to develop its own in-house AI model to power Siri and could partner with OpenAI or Anthropic instead.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the iPhone maker has talked to both companies about using either ChatGPT or Claude to power Siri. Apple "has asked them to train versions of their models that could run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for testing," said Gurman, citing unnamed sources. The talks are reportedly in early stages, and its efforts to develop its own LLM for Siri, internally dubbed LLM Siri, are still active.

If Apple outsources a Siri LLM, it would be a major concession of defeat for the company that has reportedly struggled to adapt and improve Siri to current standards. Apple stayed on the sidelines during the beginning of the genAI boom ushered in by ChatGPT. And even before ChatGPT, Siri was somewhat of a punchline for frustrated users. As one of the pioneers of voice assistants, Siri had big potential for leading the market with voice-activated actions. But users are still waiting for the so-called Siri revamp that was promised about a year ago at 2024's WWDC.

Since then, Apple teams has reportedly struggled to convert existing Siri architecture into something that rivals voice modes from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Now the AI team is reportedly building an LLM from scratch, which has led to delays. The Siri revamp has been postponed while Apple tries to come up with a plan, and aims for a spring 2026 launch. But even that might be in jeopardy, according to this report.