Smarter Siri still planned for iPhone, but there's a catch

We've been hearing about plans for a smarter Siri for some time now, but while Apple Intelligence is rolling out to UK iPhones in the next few weeks, Apple's digital assistant has yet to get its much-needed next-gen upgrade.

That will apparently change in 2025. But, while Apple reportedly plans to unveil the next generation of Siri next year, it seems that it won't become available until 2026.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that the new Siri is currently being tested as a stand-alone app by Apple insiders. It's currently known by Apple employees as "LLM Siri", because it's based on a similar large language model to ChatGPT and responds in similar ways.

What would a smarter Siri do?

Siri is 13 years old now, and it's fair to say that it hasn't quite delivered on its initial promises. It's largely okay for controlling your iPhone and smart home, but the assistant's comprehension, reliability and flexibility have fallen behind competitors.

And, despite promises of a vastly improved Siri in 2024, the most exciting thing in the iPhone 16 / iOS 18 version is a prettier activation animation.

The new version is intended to change that, which is why it's currently a separate app rather than a tweaked version of the current Siri.

The plan is to put this new, LLM-powered Siri into the main Apple Intelligence system where it'll act more like a human assistant. It'll understand more complex queries and instructions, better understand context, and it'll be able to tap into Apple Intelligence to do things like summarise messages or write text for you.

According to Bloomberg, iOS 18 will improve Siri over the coming months, although the goal is to replace it with an "end-to-end system".

Apple will also continue with its plans to offer alternative LLMs, such as Google's Gemini, for tasks and queries its own systems can't or won't handle. However, the brand wants to do as much as it can in-house – partly to protect user privacy, but also as it recognises that external systems may be better for more specialised tasks.

In terms of timeline, we're expecting the new Siri to make its debut at next year's WWDC event in the summer – that's when developers get to experiment with important new Apple tech. But, for us iPhone users, it isn't expected to arrive on our devices until well into 2026.