Apple CEO pushes Siri chief to speed up AI agent plans, Bloomberg says

Apple’s chief executive is leaning on the executive in charge of artificial intelligence to move faster on Siri, according to reporting from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman carried by The Verge. Gurman writes that CEO John Ternus is pushing AI lead Craig Federighi to deliver a version of Siri capable of competing with OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse, two rival AI agents.

The Verge’s Terrence O’Brien notes that Federighi’s team already shipped a working version of Siri’s AI features on a tight schedule, but that Apple does not see itself as keeping pace with competitors in the field.

Two upgrades are coming in the near term, per Gurman’s reporting. The first gives Siri tighter control over Apple’s own apps, letting it handle tasks such as rotating and cropping images in Photos or organizing tabs in Safari. The Verge reports those features are expected with iOS 27.3. The second and larger change extends that control to outside apps, letting Siri place a food order through Grubhub or book a table through OpenTable. Gurman says that update is more likely to arrive in the spring.

Beyond those near-term fixes, Apple is said to be aiming for something more ambitious: a Siri that can carry out ongoing tasks rather than single requests. Gurman describes the distinction directly, writing that rival agents “can keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next and continue pursuing objectives without the user initiating every individual step.” He adds that Apple wants to move in that direction and believes the company could make Siri function more like an agent as early as next year, writing that Apple has little choice given “current consumer and market demands.”

What this means

The reporting points to a leadership-level judgment inside Apple that its AI assistant is behind where the market now expects it to be. Ternus applying direct pressure on Federighi, as Gurman describes it, suggests this is being treated as a priority that reaches the top of the company rather than a routine engineering backlog item.

What’s still unclear from Gurman’s account is how Apple will handle the technical and trust issues that come with letting an assistant act across third-party services on a user’s behalf, such as placing real orders or reservations without step-by-step confirmation. The reporting also does not specify which AI model or infrastructure would power a more autonomous Siri, or how Apple’s privacy-focused approach to on-device processing fits with agents that need to reach outside services.

For now, Apple’s public roadmap stops at the features expected in iOS 27.3 and the following spring update. The fully agentic version Gurman describes remains a target for next year, not a shipped product.