Apple plans more agentic Siri, with first-party control in iOS 27.3 and third-party apps later

Apple is racing to make Siri more agentic, according to a report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman cited by The Verge. Gurman says CEO John Ternus is pressuring AI czar Craig Federighi to accelerate Siri's roadmap and deliver a powerful AI agent that can compete with OpenAI's Dots or Meta's Muse. While Federighi has delivered a functional version of Siri AI on an incredibly short timeline, the company has no illusions that it is keeping pace with its rivals.

What is expected in the coming months

Two significant improvements are expected in the coming months. One will give the assistant fine-grained control over Apple's first-party apps, allowing it to do things like rotate and crop images in Photos and organize Safari tabs. Those capabilities are expected to land with iOS 27.3.

The bigger change, integration with third-party apps, is likely to land later, in the spring, according to Gurman. That would let Siri place an order through Grubhub or book a dinner reservation through OpenTable, for example.

A move toward ongoing tasks

But that is just the start. Apple is expected to push Siri to become more agentic and enable features that will allow it to perform ongoing tasks, not just one-offs. Gurman writes: “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.”

Earlier coverage: Apple Siri AI gets access to third-party apps (iOS 27.3 developer preview)

Sources: The Verge