Apple is accelerating its Siri development roadmap to deliver a powerful AI agent that can compete directly with rival systems like OpenAI’s Dots, Meta’s Muse, and Grok Bot.
CEO John Ternus is actively pressuring AI chief Craig Federighi to speed up the Siri timeline. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that while Federighi has delivered a functional version of Siri AI on an incredibly short development schedule, the company acknowledges it is not keeping pace with competitors.
Rival platforms operate virtual machines to track goals and handle background tasks without constant user prompting. Apple intends to close this gap by next year.
Two major upgrades will roll out to users in the coming months. iOS 27.3 will bring fine-grained control over first-party applications, enabling Siri to rotate images in Photos or organize tabs in Safari.
Third-party app integration is scheduled to follow in the spring. That integration will allow users to place orders through Grubhub or book dinner reservations via OpenTable.
Apple shipped its personalized Siri features following goals set back in 2024, as reported. However, the assistant still lacks proactive task execution.
To speed up development, Apple is modifying its internal engineering pipeline for iOS 28. Instead of the standard four-week cycles for coding and integration, engineering teams received six weeks for coding and feature exploration, followed by two weeks of convergence.
Employees have responded positively to the adjustment. The extended coding window provides more time to test ideas before locking in operating system features.
Market pressures are driving Apple toward fully agentic workflows. As Gurman noted in his Power On newsletter, competitors can keep track of objectives and determine next steps independently.
Dots, Muse and Grok can keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next and continue pursuing objectives without the user initiating every individual step. Apple ultimately wants to go in this direction, I’m told, and I believe the company could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year — not that it has much of a choice, given current consumer and market demands.
Apple's final product in this category is unconfirmed, but the company could compete effectively if it executes correctly, as reported.
