Apple is reportedly considering using artificial intelligence models from Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of its Siri voice assistant. The company has engaged in discussions with both AI firms, requesting they train their models for testing on Apple’s cloud infrastructure, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources.
Current Development Status
Apple is in the early stages of evaluating this move and hasn’t made a final decision. The tech giant continues to develop its in-house AI models for Siri, which is currently powered by Apple’s own technology. While Apple allows OpenAI’s ChatGPT to handle some web-based search queries through Siri, the voice assistant itself remains powered by Apple’s in-house solutions.
Potential Benefits and Background
Adopting third-party AI models could enable Apple to offer Siri features competitive with AI assistants on Android smartphones. This development comes after Apple faced challenges in meeting its original goal of releasing an AI-powered Siri upgrade in fall 2024. The company had initially planned to introduce new Siri features in June 2024, with a targeted release in fall 2024, later postponed to spring 2025, and again delayed to sometime this year.
Technical Challenges
Technical difficulties led to a complete rebuild of Siri, with management responsibilities being reshuffled within Apple. Previous reports indicated that Apple encountered bugs while developing its own large language models over the machine learning technology powering Siri. This was part of a broader set of challenges facing Apple, which saw its stock price experience its worst performance since at least 2010.
The potential use of third-party AI models represents a significant development in Apple’s AI strategy, potentially marking a shift in how the company approaches AI integration in its products.
