Apple could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year, Gurman reports

Apple could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter, as relayed by 9to5Mac. Rival agents such as OpenAI's Dots, Meta's Muse and Grok can keep track of goals, work out what needs to happen next and keep pursuing objectives without the user starting every step. "Apple ultimately wants to go in this direction, I'm told," Gurman writes.

Siri today follows individual requests. The iOS 27.3 developer beta adds more detailed actions across Apple's apps and lets third-party developers connect their own app functions to Siri, but those tools are not the same as handing an assistant an ongoing goal, The Apple Post notes. Apple has not announced an autonomous Siri.

Gurman also reports a change in how Apple builds iOS 28. Each development stage normally splits into four weeks of coding and four of integration; for the first iOS 28 milestone, engineers got six weeks of coding and exploration and two weeks of convergence. Employees say they like the change.

In the same newsletter, Gurman reports that John Ternus held a closed-door meeting in recent weeks with Craig Federighi, who became Apple's AI czar last year, and pushed his software chief to accelerate the road map and move beyond necessary improvements to Siri, 9to5Mac writes. Mike Rockwell, vice president of Siri engineering, continues to seriously consider stepping down.