Siri, did you hear that? Apple wants to hook you up with ChatGPT or Claude
While competitors are giving away artificial intelligence to everyone, Apple has suddenly decided that its own neural networks are not cool enough for Siri. According to Bloomberg, the company is in talks with OpenAI and Anthropic to make their large language models the new brain of the voice assistant. This is a direct hint that Apple is still lagging behind in the fight for generative AI.
What is known
Back in 2024, Apple connected ChatGPT to answer some Siri queries, but the voice assistant still works on internal Apple Foundation Models. However, these models are already so inferior to competitors that Cupertino is planning a serious turnaround - to fully integrate someone else's AI into Siri.
Negotiations are ongoing with two giants at once - OpenAI (the authors of ChatGPT) and Anthropic (the creators of Claude). The company wants the models to work on Apple's own Private Cloud Compute clouds to protect user data and... well, for control, of course.
According to insiders, the tests have already taken place, and Apple liked Anthropic technology the most. But there is a caveat - Anthropic wants a multi-billion dollar annual fee that will grow every year. Therefore, Cupertino is still hesitating between Claude and ChatGPT.
At the same time, a storm is raging inside Apple: Foundation Models engineers are afraid that such a step will put an end to their other projects. People are demotivated - some have already applied to Meta, where salaries reach up to $40 million per year (Apple pays 2-3 times less).
Another interesting thing: Apple has quietly shut down its Swift Assist project - an assistant for programmers based on its own AI. Instead, the new Xcode will allow you to choose between ChatGPT and Claude.
Context.
Siri was released back in 2011, but in recent years, it has significantly lagged behind new AI assistants. Apple's previous promises to improve Siri by 2025 turned into another postponement of the deadline - now the update is planned for spring 2026.
In general, the situation looks like this: Apple either admits defeat in the short-term race for generative AI and accepts the finished product, or risks losing ground further. Interestingly, Samsung has been using a similar strategy for a long time: their Galaxy AI is based on Google Gemini, although marketing says otherwise. Amazon has also connected Anthropic for the upgraded Alexa+.
We are waiting for Siri on steroids, but whether it will be really "smart" depends on who Apple will agree with.
Source: Bloomberg
