Apple's future plans could see Siri compete with ChatGPT

Apple announced its version of artificial intelligence in the form of Apple Intelligence back in 2024 during its Worldwide Developer Conference. A number of the features Apple Intelligence introduced are now available on compatible devices, though not all, with users still waiting for the promised smarter and more contextualised Siri.

It's recently been suggested by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that the more personalised Siri might not arrive until at least iOS 27, but his latest Power On newsletter has a little extra information about what else we might be in the pipeline.

Picked up by MacRumors, who spotted that Apple's career website has several job listings for engineers to join its "Answers, Knowledge, and Information" team, the Power On newsletter suggests those job listings are just the start of something bigger.

What else might Siri offer in the future?

According to Gurman, Apple is working on a "new ChatGPT-like search experience" and might even develop a "standalone app" for it. He said in his newsletter: "While still in early stages, the team is building what it calls an 'answer engine' – a system capable of crawling the web to respond to general-knowledge questions.

"A standalone app is currently under exploration, alongside new back-end infrastructure meant to power search capabilities in future versions of Siri, Spotlight and Safari," he wrote.

The job listings include a Staff Machine Learning Engineer for "improving Siri's ability to answer personal domain questions". The listing mentions this position is part of the team that develops large language models "responsible for answering users' questions using their personal documents with privacy at the forefront", the report on MacRumors highlights.

For now, the only thing that Apple has officially announced is a more personalised version of Siri, which will have a better understanding of your personal context, such as who your mum is, as well as on-screen awareness and better controls within apps, tying everything together for a more helpful experience.

Based on the job listings and Gurman's newsletter, however, as well as CEO Tim Cook's mention of being interested in acquisitions that can accelerate the company's roadmap, it seems Apple has much bigger plans beyond the smarter Siri we already know about.