Apple reportedly working on its own LLM to bolster Siri

While Apple has been tepidly rolling out AI features to its devices this year, a new report from Bloomberg states that Apple is still working on its own large language model (LLM) that’s still a few years away but will reportedly compete with apps like ChatGPT.

This update will ideally hit iPhones in the spring of 2026 and will replace the code underpinning Siri to make the assistant better at handling complex tasks and answering hard questions. On top of that, it will make interacting with Siri more natural and conversational. The Bloomberg report mentions that Apple might announce the feature as soon as next year, likely at WWDC, but the update is still years away.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s senior vice president of software, Craig Federighi, claimed that while ChatGPT is a wonderful and super powerful tool for answering questions or helping with work, Apple wants Siri to be a smart companion to help you use your smart home or devices. He claims Siri needs to be able to do things like open your garage door and answer text messages for you.

I think Apple’s approach is smart, and the updates coming in iOS 18.2 that allow Siri to back door into ChatGPT will allow Apple’s digital assistant to do it all. What I do wonder is if the updates to Siri shown off at WWDC this year, which allowed Siri to know context about you and converse more naturally, will be part of this future update or if it will be built on top of the existing Siri infrastructure.

Overall, I’ve been pretty overwhelmed by the tsunami of AI features that have come out this year across all kinds of apps and programs, so I’m happy that Apple is taking its time and rolling out its AI features slowly, giving its users a chance to adapt and learn the features slowly without dropping them all at once.

Source: Bloomberg