Apple eyes major change to Siri

The Age

2 days ago

The project to evaluate external models was started by Siri chief Mike Rockwell and software engineering head Craig Federighi. They were given oversight of Siri after the duties were removed from the command of John Giannandrea, the company's AI chief. He was sidelined in the wake of a tepid response to Apple Intelligence and Siri feature delays.
Rockwell, who previously launched the Vision Pro headset, assumed the Siri engineering role in March. After taking over, he instructed his new group to assess whether Siri would do a better job handling queries using Apple's AI models or third-party technology, including Claude, ChatGPT and Alphabet's Google Gemini.
After multiple rounds of testing, Rockwell and other executives concluded that Anthropic's technology is most promising for Siri's needs, the people said. That led Adrian Perica, the company's vice president of corporate development, to start discussions with Anthropic about using Claude, the people said.
The Siri assistant — originally released in 2011 — has fallen behind popular AI chatbots, and Apple's attempts to upgrade the software have been stymied by engineering snags and delays.
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A year ago, Apple unveiled new Siri capabilities, including ones that would let it tap into users' personal data and analyze on-screen content to better fulfil queries. The company also demonstrated technology that would let Siri more precisely control apps and features across Apple devices.
The enhancements were far from ready. Apple initially announced plans for an early 2025 release but ultimately delayed the launch indefinitely. They are now planned for next year, Bloomberg News has reported.
AI uncertainty
People with knowledge of Apple's AI team say it is operating with a high degree of uncertainty and a lack of clarity, with executives still poring over a number of possible directions. Apple has already approved a multibillion dollar budget for 2026 for running its own models via the cloud but its plans for beyond that remain murky.
Still, Federighi, Rockwell and other executives have grown increasingly open to the idea that embracing outside technology is the key to a near-term turnaround. They don't see the need for Apple to rely on its own models — which they currently consider inferior — when it can partner with third parties instead, according to the people.
Licensing third-party AI would mirror an approach taken by Samsung. While the company brands its features under the Galaxy AI umbrella, many of its features are actually based on Gemini. Anthropic, for its part, is already used by Amazon.com to help power the new Alexa+.
In the future, if its own technology improves, the executives believe Apple should have ownership of AI models given their increasing importance to how products operate. The company is working on a series of projects, including a tabletop robot and glasses that will make heavy use of AI.
Apple has also recently considered acquiring Perplexity in order to help bolster its AI work, Bloomberg has reported. It also briefly held discussions with Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati.
Souring morale
Apple's models are developed by a roughly 100-person team run by Ruoming Pang, an Apple distinguished engineer who joined from Google in 2021 to lead this work. He reports to Daphne Luong, a senior director in charge of AI research.
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Luong is one of Giannandrea's top lieutenants, and the foundation models team is one of the few significant AI groups still reporting to Giannandrea. Even in that area, Federighi and Rockwell have taken a larger role.
Regardless of the path it takes, the proposed shift has weighed on the team, which has some of the AI industry's most in-demand talent.
Some members have signalled internally that they are unhappy that the company is considering technology from a third-party, creating the perception that they are to blame, at least partially, for the company's AI shortcomings. They've said that they could leave for multimillion-dollar packages being floated by Meta and OpenAI.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been offering some engineers annual pay packages between $US10 million ($15.2 million) and $US40 million — or even more — to join its new Superintelligence Labs group, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple is known, in many cases, to pay its AI engineers half — or even less — than what they can get on the open market.
One of Apple's most senior large language model researchers, Tom Gunter, left last week. He had worked at Apple for about eight years, and some colleagues see him as difficult to replace given his unique skillset and the willingness of Apple's competitors to pay exponentially more for talent.
Apple this month also nearly lost the team behind MLX, its key open-source system for developing machine learning models on the latest Apple chips. After the engineers threatened to leave, Apple made counteroffers to retain them — and they're staying for now.
Anthropic and OpenAI discussions
In its discussions with both Anthropic and OpenAI, the iPhone maker requested a custom version of Claude and ChatGPT that could run on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers — infrastructure based on high-end Mac chips that the company currently uses to operate its more sophisticated in-house models.
Apple believes that running the models on its own chips housed in Apple-controlled cloud servers — rather than relying on third-party infrastructure — will better safeguard user privacy. The company has already internally tested the feasibility of the idea.
Other Apple Intelligence features are powered by AI models that reside on consumers' devices. These models — slower and less powerful than cloud-based versions — are used for tasks like summarising short emails and creating Genmojis.
Apple is opening up the on-device models to third-party developers later this year, letting app makers create AI features based on its technology.
The company hasn't announced plans to give apps access to the cloud models. One reason for that is the cloud servers don't yet have the capacity to handle a flood of new third-party features.
The company isn't currently working on moving away from its in-house models for on-device or developer use cases. Still, there are fears among engineers on the foundation models team that moving to a third-party for Siri could portend a move for other features as well in the future.
Last year, OpenAI offered to train on-device models for Apple, but the iPhone maker was not interested.
The Siri assistant — originally released in 2011 — has fallen behind popular AI chatbots, and Apple's attempts to upgrade the software have been stymied by engineering snags and delays.
Since December 2024, Apple has been using OpenAI to handle some features. In addition to responding to world knowledge queries in Siri, ChatGPT can write blocks of text in the Writing Tools feature. Later this year, in iOS 26, there will be a ChatGPT option for image generation and on-screen image analysis.
While discussing a potential arrangement, Apple and Anthropic have disagreed over preliminary financial terms, according to the people. The AI startup is seeking a multibillion-dollar annual fee that increases sharply each year. The struggle to reach a deal has left Apple contemplating working with OpenAI or others if it moves forward with the third-party plan, they said.
Management shifts
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If Apple does strike an agreement, the influence of Giannandrea, who joined Apple from Google in 2018 and is a proponent of in-house large language model development, would continue to shrink.
In addition to losing Siri, Giannandrea was stripped of responsibility over Apple's robotics unit. And, in previously unreported moves, the company's Core ML and App Intents teams — groups responsible for frameworks that let developers integrate AI into their apps — were shifted to Federighi's software engineering organisation.