Apple is racing to make Siri more agentic

Apple is working diligently to enhance Siri's capabilities, aiming to transform it into a more autonomous AI agent capable of rivaling industry leaders such as OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple's CEO John Ternus is urging AI chief Craig Federighi to expedite the Siri development process and produce a highly functional AI assistant. Despite Siri's rapid progress under Federighi's leadership, Apple acknowledges the challenge of keeping up with competitors.

Two key enhancements to Siri are anticipated in the near future. First, the assistant's control over Apple's native applications will be refined, empowering it to execute tasks like resizing and cropping images in the Photos app, as well as organizing Safari tabs. These improvements are expected to accompany the release of iOS 27.3.

The more ambitious objective, integration with third-party applications, is projected to roll out later in the spring, granting Siri the ability to execute actions like placing an order via Grubhub or scheduling a dinner reservation through OpenTable.

However, Apple's ambitions extend beyond these enhancements. Gurman suggests that the company intends to propel Siri towards a more autonomous role, allowing it to perform continuous tasks without requiring user intervention for every step. Examples of such objectives include tracking goals, determining subsequent actions, and persisting in pursuing objectives without the constant initiation of individual steps by the user.

Sources indicate that Apple may strive to achieve this level of agentic behavior as early as next year, although the necessity of such progress may be driven by consumer demands and market pressures.