Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


                         Siri to Become a Real Chatbot?

   Adam Engst

   Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has reported on [1]two phases of Apple's Siri
   plans. First, to make good on its Apple Intelligence promises from
   2024, Apple will replace Siri's creaky command parser with a large
   language model based on Google's Gemini. This initial update to Siri
   will appear in iOS 26.4, likely due at the end of March or the
   beginning of April. In theory, it will provide the 'more personalized
   Siri' that can integrate your email, photos, and messages into its
   actions and responses. It will also include the App Intents system,
   which lets Siri control third-party apps based on your requests, and
   should be better at finding current information on the Web.

   Gurman says Apple will unveil the second phase of Siri at WWDC in June
   2026, when the company will build a voice- and text-based chatbot
   experience'codenamed Campos'into iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. Apart
   from Siri becoming a chatbot, those updates are reportedly more aimed
   at improving performance and fixing bugs, hopefully addressing the
   errors and excesses of Liquid Glass, Apple's controversial translucent
   redesign.

   However, even though the company is testing this new chatbot technology
   as a standalone Siri app, much like the ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
   apps currently available, Gurman says that the company doesn't plan to
   ship that app. Instead, he says we'll interact with Siri as we do
   today, which could undermine the entire concept of Siri as a chatbot.

   I hope Apple plans some sort of persistent text interface, unlike the
   way Siri conversations disappear today. Such an interface becomes
   especially important once Siri can maintain ongoing conversations by
   responding to follow-up questions, comments, and commands. Chatbot
   transcripts are crucial for understanding what has been said and for
   formulating responses.

   Additionally, although Gurman says Apple is considering limiting how
   much Siri remembers for privacy reasons, a conversation history is
   vital. I often search for and revisit old chats with ChatGPT'it's
   incredibly helpful to refer back to previous details or to pick up
   where I left off without starting over.

   Some have criticized the blank text box as an interface, but I'm unsure
   what they envision replacing it. Voice is an excellent add-on at times,
   but it's basically still text and suffers from extreme linearity'you
   can't easily edit or take back anything you've said using voice alone,
   whereas it's trivial to edit or modify text in numerous ways before
   pressing Return. Even when I dictate, I often find myself editing the
   text to correct misrecognized words, particularly when they're key to
   the query or conversation.

   Plus, while Apple pioneered the move toward graphical interfaces, which
   excel at simplifying highly specific actions on objects or with
   controls you can see, power users often stick with text interfaces
   because they can operate on objects and metadata that can't be seen.
   You can do a lot with files in the Finder, but you can't rename files
   in a nested hierarchy according to a regular expression, something
   that's simple with the command line. What chatbots bring to the text
   interface is the ability to be understood without hewing to a formal
   command structure.

   One final concern: Gurman reports that Apple and Google are discussing
   hosting the new chatbot directly on Google's servers rather than
   Apple's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure. If that happens, it would
   represent a significant shift in Apple's privacy stance'something worth
   watching as these plans develop.

References

   1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-21/ios-27-apple-to-revamp-siri-as-built-in-iphone-mac-chatbot-to-fend-off-openai?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2OTAyNDk2NywiZXhwIjoxNzY5NjI5NzY3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFRXOVlLR0NURlUwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.awOoIDGdEkCAvho8waoXR6VVVojI3jGvQHJeDjwcyrs

.