Chasing ChatGPT voice, will Siri undergo a major transformation in 2026? Apple is reportedly looking to enhance its conversational abilities with a more advanced model

Author: Li Dan

Source: Hard AI

Recent news indicates that the voice assistant Siri, which has been around for thirteen years, may undergo a significant transformation in a year and a half, as Apple plans to equip Siri with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

On Thursday, November 21, Eastern Time, Bloomberg reported that insiders revealed Apple is intensifying the development of a more conversational Siri digital assistant, aiming to keep pace with voice services like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The new version of Siri will utilize more advanced large language models (LLM) to engage in back-and-forth conversations with users and will be able to process more complex user requests faster than before. The new Siri will ultimately be integrated into Apple's personal intelligent AI system, Apple Intelligence, and is referred to internally by Apple developers as LLM Siri.

According to reports, Apple plans to announce these significant improvements to Siri as early as 2025, as part of the software updates for iOS 19 and macOS 16, which will be released next year. Internally, Apple has named the updates for iOS and macOS Luck and Cheer, respectively.

However, similar to the Apple Intelligence released in September this year, the new Siri features will not be immediately incorporated into hardware devices launching next year. According to the reports, Apple currently plans to release the new version of Siri to consumers as early as spring 2026, which is about a year and a half from now.

Apple's spokesperson declined to comment on the reports. If true, this would be the latest sign of Apple's efforts to advance AI functionality, marking a significant overhaul of Siri following its integration with ChatGPT.

On October 28, a little over a month after the release of Apple Intelligence, Apple launched the first batch of AI features supported by Apple Intelligence to the public on iPhone, iPad, and Mac here.

The first batch of AI features is relatively basic and conventional, including a writing tool integrated into applications for summarizing and rewriting text, AI image cleanup in photos, article and notification summaries, audio transcription summaries in the Notes app, and smart replies in Messages.

Apple introduced that with the new AI technology, Siri's interactions have become more natural and flexible. Users can type text to communicate with Siri on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac at any time and can switch freely between text and voice. Even if users' expressions are not coherent, Siri can understand smoothly and maintain context for continuous requests. Siri can also answer thousands of questions about Apple product features and settings.

While bringing the new AI features to hardware devices, Apple has announced that a new batch of AI features will be released in December, including the integration of ChatGPT services into Siri, as well as functionalities for emoji and image generation, such as the intelligent emoji pack Genmoji that generates original emojis from descriptive text input, Image Playground for image generation, and Visual Intelligence The Image Wand that transforms sketches into artistic products.

Bloomberg reported this Thursday that in addition to ChatGPT, Apple plans to offer users more chatbot options, such as Google's Gemini. Apple is developing a new version of Siri to bring AI features similar to ChatGPT internally while emphasizing user privacy. However, Apple may still allow users to access third-party AI systems with specialized capabilities or information.

After the news of the new version of Siri broke, some netizens commented on social media X that Apple's actions are indeed slow, stating, "They should have had something like this years ago."

Some netizens expressed shock at how far behind Apple is in this technology, but considering Apple's tendency to follow in the footsteps of pioneers, they were not surprised by the news. Others noted that it took Apple several years to bring Siri to the level it should be, and now they need to make a concerted effort to keep Siri up to date.