Apple is pushing to turn Siri into a real AI agent, with third-party app control due in the spring

Apple knows Siri is behind, and it's trying to sprint. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that CEO John Ternus is pressing AI chief Craig Federighi to speed up the Siri roadmap and ship an agent able to take on Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots, Terrence O'Brien writes for The Verge.

Federighi did get a working Siri AI out on a very tight timeline. But according to Gurman, Apple has no illusions that it's keeping up with rivals.

What's coming

Two upgrades are expected over the next few months:

• Deeper control of Apple's own apps, like rotating and cropping in Photos or organizing Safari tabs. That's expected with iOS 27.3.
• Third-party app integration, the bigger change, likely in the spring. That would let Siri place a Grubhub order or book a table on OpenTable.

After that, Apple wants Siri to handle ongoing tasks rather than one-offs. Gurman describes the rivals' agents as able to track goals, work out the next step and keep going without the user starting each one, and says Apple wants to head that way, possibly as early as next year. He adds that consumer and market pressure leave Apple little choice.

Why developers should care

This lines up with what Apple has already opened to developers: Siri AI hooks for third-party apps arrived as a developer preview in iOS 27.3. If Siri becomes the thing that orders the food and books the table, the actions your app exposes to it become a front door, possibly the main one.

The open question is the same one every agent maker faces: how much will people let it do without asking? Apple's privacy reputation could be an advantage there, if it can catch up on capability.

Details are thin, and these are reported plans, not announcements. Treat the timelines as targets.

Scoreboard update: AI +1. Apple's CEO pushes to turn Siri into an agent that runs other apps on its own.

Stay undead.