Your iPhone's Siri could soon work like ChatGPT Dots, if Apple's CEO gets his way

Siri AI may see yet another glow-up as Apple CEO John Ternus is reportedly pushing to turn it into an agent. Meanwhile, the Pixel 11 Pro already ships with an agentic Gemini Intelligence, unlike what we get with the iPhone 18 Pro Max today.

John Ternus's private push to turn Siri into an agent

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the outlet's chief Apple correspondent, in his latest Power On newsletter, Apple's new CEO, John Ternus, recently held a private meeting with software chief Craig Federighi. In that meeting, Ternus reportedly expressed frustration with the fact that Apple isn't moving on AI with the same urgency as its rivals.

Ternus then reportedly pushed Federighi to speed up the road map and move past just fixing Siri. It should be noted that Gurman himself predicted that Ternus would become Apple's next CEO long before Apple confirmed it, so his reporting on these matters is definitely one that carries weight.



In Apple's November 2 earnings call, Ternus struck a different tone by praising Siri AI and calling it "a new chapter in AI" for Apple and "the kind of Siri that we always wanted." However, according to Gurman, privately Ternus knows that Apple is still well behind its rivals.

Gurman's read is that Apple ultimately wants Siri to become agentic, and if the expectations hold, this could happen as early as next year.

Siri AI does what you ask, but rivals go above and beyond

As it stands today, Siri AI can answer questions, write emails and texts, set a reminder and pull information from your mail and messages. Also, in iOS 27.3 (which is now in beta and will be public in December), Apple added the ability to do precise actions in Apple's own apps. Gurman says third-party apps are likely to gain that ability in the spring.



So, if all of this works now, even after the two-year Siri AI delay, then what is the issue? The problem is, Siri can only handle one of those requests at a time. Siri AI is request-based, meaning that you give it one command, it goes and does it, then waits for the next command.

Rivals like ChatGPT Dots, Meta Muse and Grok can act like agents, where you can hand it an ongoing job and it can continue working on it between other tasks and conversations. Some, like Claude and ChatGPT, can even read the user's screen, move the cursor and click and type on your behalf. The benefit of an AI like this is that it can save you from having to re-ask after every step.

Today, for a user of a device such as the Pixel 11 Pro, the AI experience could be very different as Android 17's Gemini Intelligence can run multi-step tasks across apps without you having to direct every step. For Apple, narrowing that lead next year would require the company to move faster.

iPhone users have other options too

If I were an iPhone user who wanted to use an agent today, my options would be to go third-party. ChatGPT Dots has it but does require a subscription to a higher tier, and iOS 27.3 in December is the realistic next step for Siri to improve. I would love to see Apple accomplish this soon and for Siri to be able to handle one recurring task on its own.

More on Siri AI and iOS 27:

• How Siri AI gets more capable in iOS 27.3
• Everything you need to know about iOS 27
• Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max

• Follow me on X and Threads

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