Apple's Siri AI Can Be Swapped Out for Claude, ChatGPT, Code Shows

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ttosh about 4 hours ago 100 commentsRead Article on macrumors.com

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Kuyawa•about 2 hours ago

Siri was the first widely available AI bot but they forgot to open it to developers. The ecosystem would have grown a million fold in all these years

Never underestimate the power of a bored programmer

  Siri turn on the lights
  Siri code a Doom clone in Swift
  Siri design a landing page for a Consulting Agency
  Siri summarize the latest news about AI
  Siri find a solution to the Riemann hypothesis

Now that's an agent I'd use. Can we start with Siri for the terminal?

$ Siri 'List the files in this folder'

cobolcomesback•about 2 hours ago

Amazon did exactly this with Alexa skills and it hasn’t exactly been a booming success. Turns out that all of the things you listed as examples are stuff that most consumers don’t actually want or will use.

“AI as a chat bot” has always been cool and fun in sci-fi movies, but it’s the least imaginative real world use for it. We need to move past it.

> $ Siri 'List the files in this folder'

Why in the world would I ever use this instead of just ‘ls’?

bastawhiz•about 1 hour ago

The problem with Alexa is that by the time it appeared anywhere other than Echo devices, it was already deeply enahittified. Siri is in your pocket, on your wrist, and in your ears. Alexa was stuck on your kitchen counter asking you if you wanted to try Amazon Music.

Dennip•about 2 hours ago

I'd settle for a siri that can at least turn the lights off properly.

Google assistant on the nvidia shield left Siri in the dust years ago. Siri can't even chain basic commands in your smart home, it can't retain any kind of context (e.g. dim the lights...a bit more).

dawnerd•about 1 hour ago

That’s the weird part. For me it used to work very well, then after some update it just stopped. Typical Apple.

Tagbert•about 2 hours ago

You haven’t used the beta

c-hendricks•about 1 hour ago

I tried "turn off the lights in [room a] and [room b]" in the new Siri app and rather than Siri saying they can't do compound commands they just turned off the lights in one of the two rooms listed.

So, progress?

Any agent with the Home Assistant MCP hooked up can do it fine.

fragmede•about 1 hour ago

Now playing "Turn Off the Lights" by Teddy Pendergrass on Apple Music.

usern20260720•about 1 hour ago

$ Siri 'rename this thousand of photos in these folders describing their content and make sure to use the same name for duplicates regardless of their size'

I am waiting for this function to sort my folders

fragmede•about 1 hour ago

ChatGPT/Claude can do that today.

hodder•about 2 hours ago

The thing is, Apple will have never lost this opportunity. The distribution advantage of the user base is so deep they can basically always implement this at will.

bubblegumcrisis•about 2 hours ago

What about: just not Siri at all. What about that. What about MrSunshine. I would rather have my own bot that I code. But no, vendor lock in.

Telemakhos•about 2 hours ago

Apfel filled that role: $ apfel "List the files in this folder."

https://apfel.franzai.com/

taybin•about 3 hours ago

It’d be short sighted to not have a wrapper around which AI to use, even without implementation for them. Like, having an abstract parent class with a Siri implementation of it would be baseline good software engineering.

Someone1234•about 2 hours ago

Yeah; plus we know they're designing with potential future local-only Vs. hybrid Vs. cloud-only in mind depending on hardware/market changes. So having it be this flexible buys them a ton of future potential.

People have speculated that with FPGAs or even an ASIC you could take some smaller models we have today, turn the chip into essentially that model-as-hardware, and get some really compelling performance/power-usage characteristics.

At that point running a GOOD quantized Q8 model on a phone is not beyond the realm.

donbox•about 2 hours ago

Maybe we would get LLMs on (pluggable) cartridges.

pvtmert•about 2 hours ago

May happen with Android, not going to happen on $AAPL devices... Heck, even the battery is non-swappable!

Grombobulous•about 2 hours ago

I’m not even sure how they would implement these features without them being interoperable. All the AI systems use pretty similar if not identical API standards.

dd8601fn•about 2 hours ago

That exists already for Apple devices. They just never give third party models first class access to user and device data.

That arrangement will change, somewhat, later today.

tiffanyh•about 2 hours ago

And given how Apple switched out OpenAI for Gemini (to power Siri), they experienced firsthand the importance of having said wrapper.

TheDong•about 1 hour ago

And you can also sideload apps (only in the EU), change you default navigation app from apple maps (only in the EU), and use more features of the NFC reader (only in the EU).

The code for all of those things is there, but not enabled if for most iOS users. There's a non-zero chance this code is there for Apple to try and convince the EU to let them release a Siri AI, and then just like sideloading have some impossible-to-actually-use alternative path to make the DMA happy.

cdrnsf•about 1 hour ago

My favorite Siri behavior is telling it, on my phone, to turn on a focus state only for it to transfer the request to a nearby HomePod that tells me it can't help with that. I hope the new changes to it are an improvement, but the bar is currently buried in the dirt.

akie•about 4 hours ago

This is a very clever platform play. If you make Siri / your mac the central access point for all AI related workflows and make models interchangeable, then Apple has a huge weapon in the AI race.

freedomben•about 3 hours ago

I don't disagree, but I do feel the need to point out this was not Apple's plan A. Luckily for them they have so many tools and options at their disposal, that they are able to massively fail at developing their own models and still end up in a good position.

dgellow•about 3 hours ago

Apple “genius” has been to accept their plan A failed (the original Apple Intelligence), and instead of doubling down, let the others explore the space, then offer a good interface (I say that, I haven’t seen if it’s actually good).

So many other actors in the industry would have just doubled down and follow the race to the bottom

bel8•about 3 hours ago

Genius would have been for Apple to get Siri in a better state after so many years.

This looks more like a participation medal, if at all.

notatoad•about 2 hours ago

maybe wait until their plan B succeeds before calling it genius. all we know so far is that plan A has failed.

sublinear•about 2 hours ago

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're spot on.

Almost everyone developing their own AI is doomed to fail. I would not be surprised that when the dust settles, Microsoft CoPilot and Google Gemini will be left standing while OpenAI and Anthropic fade away. They will get what they need and then throw them away.

"Embrace, extend, extinguish" is the same playbook for decades, and you can only do that when you make money. Yes, making money still matters and post-capitalism is a big fat lie.

spiralpolitik•about 1 hour ago

It's the same plan. Apple's model is:

Handle the query on device. If the device cannot handle the query, push the query to Private Cloud, If Private Cloud cannot handle the query, push the query to a third party of the users choosing.

Which is pretty much the same as what they announced a few years ago.

Apple underestimated the amount of time and work needed to get to work and really the only bit that I think changed is that Private Cloud (and possibly the on device model) is a white label Google model rather than being developed in-house by Apple.

lern_too_spel•about 1 hour ago

The EU forced this on Apple and other manufacturers. Apple fought this bitterly, but there is only so much market share they are willing to lose before capitulating. https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/es/apply-ai-alliance/community...

sajithdilshan•about 3 hours ago

That’s actually a good solution. Create a platform where app actions can be invoked with a permission model by any AI model.

Maybe apple can even have something similar to MCPs for tool invocations of apps and publish it so all models can actually be trained to use that framework

atonse•about 3 hours ago

I actually think this is what they ended up doing - just regular conversations with tool calling into your various apps, behind a Siri AI API. not HTTP based mcps (for now) but rather local ones.

rock_artist•about 1 hour ago

Apple Foundations Models Framework already aimed towards some generalized API for models. Personally I like it, just as I would be a little happier if instead of codex/claude/antigravity (rip gemini cli) I would have single standardized interface.

With mobile devices especially where ideally models could be shared across several apps.

But this specific code I'd assume is targeted to comply with EU regulations more than anything.

OT:

Since I've moved to Spain my principal Apple account is still in my home country but I've made another one for local app-store (since some local apps aren't available if you're not in the Spanish store).

iPhone is acting really strange, I'm logged to my principal account for iCloud+ and anything and local App Store.

If I log back to my principal account, I loose HCE mode and my building NFC app stops working until I re-log in the Spanish Apple Store.

If I'm logged at the Spanish account, I loose Siri AI which is blocked in the EU...

theturtletalks•about 2 hours ago

Once Siri gets MCP support, it’ll be my main orchestrator.

I built an app that lets me run terminals on my MacBook. It’s a Next app so I can go to that website on my phone using Tailscale. It has a built-in MCP server, so I can connect it to ChatGPT and have it create terminal sessions, orchestrate terminal sessions, all that good stuff.

Down the line, I’d like to be able to connect it to Siri and just talk to my phone and it can control terminal sessions and projects that I’m working on on my laptop.

c-hendricks•about 1 hour ago

I'd love it if Siri does, but I don't expect big corps to keep supporting MCP since MCP gives so much control to the end user, can't charge for eg. Google integration when someone can just add an MCP to handle it.

syntaxing•about 4 hours ago

I would pay a good chunk of money if Apple released a local AI hub to coordinate all AI usage locally (including photo indexing).

tencentshill•about 2 hours ago

That is rumored to exist.

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/apple-command-center/

Mark Gurman seems to get extraordinarily accurate and detailed leaks. I wonder how Apple got this leaky. Pretty much everything about the Duo was known months in advance.

delfinom•about 2 hours ago

Well, either corporate security got incompetent or they intentionally let select leaks exist to "test the market response". Established companies tend to get more risk averse overtime.

azinman2•about 2 hours ago

Photo indexing is already local. What specifically are you looking for?

reilly3000•about 2 hours ago

You should look at Osaurus.

kmfrk•about 2 hours ago

Third-party calls won't eat into Apple's compute, so it's not entirely against the interests of Apple as they put caps on people's AI use.

I wonder what the margin on this stuff is for them:

    Some Apple Intelligence features in the Home app, such as
    video summaries, are available for a limited number of
    cameras depending on your iCloud+ plan — up to 1 camera
    in the 2 TB plan, up to 2 cameras in the 6 TB plan, and
    up to 5 cameras in the 12 TB plan. Supported camera
    counts and other iCloud+ plan features may change over time.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/127901

vjvjvjvjghv•43 minutes ago

Seems Apple's first attempt AI failing two years ago is turning into a blessing. Now they can buy AI as a commodity from the cheapest supplier. Well played.

davikr•about 1 hour ago

I don't want to tell Siri to ask Claude or GPT - I want Siri to automatically delegate to another model of my choice when it can't answer something, instead of showing irrelevant web searches.

thallosaurus•about 4 hours ago

Don't they need that for China for compliance with their law?

Gareth321•about 4 hours ago

Possibly, but certainly the EU.

kisamoto•about 2 hours ago

In my opinion the OS should broker the communication between harnesses (which is part of Siri), LLMs and app functionality. It can take into account the permissions, the user could configure which LLM to use at an OS system settings level and complex workflows can integrate permissions like FaceID only once as the harness then interacts with APIs exposed by applications (arguably already there with app intents).

Self promotion blog article:

https://braw.dev/blog/2026-04-06-mobile-os-as-agentic-broker...

embedding-shape•about 2 hours ago

Feels like this is based on the idea that any model is interchangeable with any other, while all of them are better at some stuff, worse at some stuff.

Besides, the modern concept of "agent" is what, some year old? Bit fast to ossify stuff in the OSes already.

nicce•about 4 hours ago

That would be really cool, if you can route your local model for it.

PunchyHamster•about 3 hours ago

I think that's the end goal, at least looking at where their hardware is going. Or flexible routing with easy tasks running locally and only the more complex ones hitting the cloud

vinni2•about 4 hours ago

Hmmm then why is it not available in EU?

Gareth321•about 4 hours ago

This appears to be the current feature prototype intended for the EU and potentially China. Apple has chosen not to release the new Siri AI in the EU because our Digital Markets Act requires them to allow interoperability. I.e. that users be allowed to choose another AI provider.

Ostensibly they'll activate this in the EU when it's ready. Given the current functionality, it looks ready (or close to being ready). My guess is it is ready and Apple is doing their usual negotiation tactics with the EU to see who blinks first.

MBCook•about 1 hour ago

Apple proposed a solution to the EU after reportedly extensive talks and asked the EU if it would satisfy them.

The EU said “build it then we’ll tell you”, which is crazy.

The problem is not having Siri use different models beneath. That’s not what the EU wants. They want Siri to be replaced by Gemini/etc completely. Which fits with the DMA.

Apple’s proposal was for something akin to an agent that could gather the necessary data for the 3rd party AI to use. Because what they refused to do is let any other AI have unfettered access to everything whenever it wants.

So I suspect this is really for Apple’s benefit. I don’t think the EU would be happy if you could still use Siri, but it was grok underneath. Because that would still be Siri.

acuteaura•about 2 hours ago

My secret hope is that Tim Cook was the main weight behind cutting off half the new features from Apple software in the EU an attempt to weaponize their users against legislators. Even features that have had analogues where nobody would've ever asked for interoperability (i.e. Handoff/Continuity exists in the EU, but iPhone mirroring doesn't)

This is not how politics works here.

djc404•about 4 hours ago

I think it is because the EU is requiring broader access to the deeper layers that Apple doesn’t want to give.

EDIT: by broader I mean all apps the user installs on their phone.

MBCook•about 1 hour ago

Yes. Besides, if you swapped out the thing underneath, you would still get the UI and branding of Siri.

I don’t think that would meet the requirements of the DMA. Would it?

stetrain•about 4 hours ago

There’s a difference between Apple being able to swap out the model in code and Apple letting end users choose which model to use.

isodev•about 2 hours ago

Nice, thanks EU for forcing Apple. I guess it was possible all along.

dd8601fn•about 1 hour ago

This is not what EU regulators asked for. They want first class access to user data and devices for would-be alternative providers… which Apple simply won’t allow outside PCC. And, for now, that runs co-developed Apple and Google models based on Gemini technology in secured infrastructure designed to keep that kind of data off-limits to anyone, including Apple.

This is not that. This is expanding the Extensions that you already have. You can look at it in your Settings already. They just don’t have the ability to do much work for you (like the csv example).

All of which is why EU users are being left behind on the new Apple Intelligence (for now).

velcrovan•about 3 hours ago

Is there any hint that Siri can be connected to arbitrary MCP providers?

rougehuh•about 3 hours ago

So will they have access to the AOP?

You can’t even search this because Google thinks you mean “app” even when you use quotes around “aop”.

It’s the thing that runs PhraseSpotter 24/7

MBCooked•about 1 hour ago

Try Googling “PhraseSpotter” :)

crazyeng•about 3 hours ago

Just playing the devil advocate: what happens when the answers from a not-Apple LLM are garbage? Who the users are going to blame, Apple or OpenAI, Anthropic, etc..? I'm not 100% on Apple side on this, I would love to chose whatever I want, even local models, but I get why trey trying to control 100% of the user experience. If they could trust any provider with customers data, they would let them in, since they're not competitors. They would even let Apple not spend a ton of money on developing LLMs....

layer8•about 3 hours ago

Are people blaming Apple when Google search in Safari gives garbage results? Some probably are, but that really shouldn’t be a relevant discussion, in particular when the user explicitly chose which AI backend to use.

sigbottle•about 2 hours ago

Well, we can generalize this a bit to model routing in general. Actually, just AI in general - even when directly interacting with GPT we haven't figured out good protocols yet.

aNoob7000•about 3 hours ago

If you are smart enough to change the default, you would know which LLM you picked and could point the finger at it.

Apple is in the game of providing an application platform. Maybe in the future they will provide their own LLM.

Simulacra•about 4 hours ago

Siri, and Alexa, would be significantly more useful if it could be connected to ChatGPT etc.

pasc1878•about 3 hours ago

It happens now – when I ask certain questions Siri asks if I want ChatGPT to answer it.

MBCook•about 1 hour ago

That’s gone in 27. You can still ask ChatGPT by prefixing your request with “ask ChatGPT“ like you’ve been able to for the last two years or so.

But it will never prompt you anymore, because Siri AI can handle that stuff now when it couldn’t before.

Whether you think it’s better or not is up to you. I do. I also found the version of ChatGPT it used to be worse than the one in the app.

felixgallo•about 3 hours ago

Good news, Alexa+ (included with Prime) is already an Anthropic model, probably Sonnet.

anslopic22•about 2 hours ago

Now Claude will be listening to your audio 24/7 via the AOP logs:

    [PhraseSpotter] Detected wake word “hungry” with a score 0.942.

    [com.apple.voiceactivation] Proceeding with full wake.

And serve you ads accordingly (or sell the log data to other ad networks)

MBCook•about 2 hours ago

There’s a reason everyone knows the various wake words.

All the big companies know how suicidal that would be. They already get accused of it by people who don’t understand how targeted web advertising works.

Some of the new AI start-ups don’t seem to understand that, but Apple absolutely will not make a mistake that stupid.

MBCooked•about 1 hour ago

Right because they’re so benevolent?

High rep accounts like yours always come to defend, and you will probably dead this comment.

You claim that the AOP (always on processor) - which must always run in order to listen for “Hey Siri” - doesn’t actually listen for “Hey Siri”.

Or you claim that it does but they would never ever use the PhraseSpotter for that purpose because they’re too benevolent.

Barbing•about 2 hours ago

They could definitely take that risk.

They could instead make a good assumption that you'll search the web, open the Yelp or OpenTable app. Take your phone to your favorite restaurant and/or pay with a credit card at the grocery store.

If you walk to a taco truck without your phone and pay with cash, you probably don’t do that every time and you generate enough data through other means to be accurately advertised to.

Telemakhos•about 2 hours ago

Apple is highly sensitive to dangers to its reputation. They would nuke any service that seemed to be spying on users, just like they revoked Facebook's cert back in 2019 over the same issue.

Forgeties79•about 2 hours ago

Glad I’ve never turned on Siri

verdverm•about 1 hour ago

this is likely true for most applications accessing the standard APIs, a good thing in my book

vouaobrasil•about 2 hours ago

It would be great if AI could be completely removed from iOS altogether, including any underlying frameworks.

LetsGetTechnicl•about 2 hours ago

Agreed. I'm not looking forward to iOS 27 where basically the only option is this new Siri. I was perfectly content with using the old "dumb" Siri to set timers, turn on a light and control my Apple TV and nothing else.

HumblyTossed•about 3 hours ago

News at 11: Developers write decoupled code.

saghm•about 2 hours ago

If this consistently has happened at every place you've worked in your career, I think you're luckier than you realize. Independent of the implementation, it's also still interesting as a sign of what might be supported for users down the line; I don't agree that this is how they'd write the code if they never expected to allow another provider, and other comments in the thread have already provided some insight into what the context might be (e.g. EU market).

MBCook•about 1 hour ago

Apple had enough experience relying on and being screwed by third parties that they have a built-in allergy to it. They do not like being boxed in and always want to be in control of their destiny.

This would’ve been useful during their bake off where they were trying to choose if they wanted to go with Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI. But even without that, they would absolutely not want to be in a situation where they had to redo everything to get off a bad partner.

stego-tech•about 3 hours ago

Neat. Now let me point it to an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint of my choosing, like a Mac Mini running Hermes on my LAN.

I do not want my personal data or the queries against it to leave my network boundaries if at all possible. This should be a default option.

Grombobulous•about 2 hours ago

You can download an app that does that. You don’t have to use Siri, and it can be turned off entirely, or decoupled from AI entirely, and the wake word can be disabled entirely. A lot of options are available.

Make a Shortcut that will open your local voice assistant app of choice when you press the action button.