Apple may give Siri a brain transplant with the help of Claude or ChatGPT

While we’re still waiting for some of the Apple Intelligence Siri features promised next year, a big new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg says that Apple is talking with Anthropic and OpenAI about replacing Siri with a version of Claude or ChatGPT.

This would be a massive shift from the current plans, which involve Apple continuing to improve its own in-house LLM model as it tries to deliver critical new Siri features that were supposed to come this Spring, and still have no real release date.

The report says that Apple has spoken with both companies to explore the potential of using their LLMs to power Siri. It has even asked them to develop and train special versions of their models that can run on Apple’s own cloud infrastructure—a critical component for a company so concerned with privacy.

With iOS 18.2, Apple allowed for ChatGPT integration, but that only allows Siri to pass a request on to ChatGPT if it can’t provide the answer itself, and only with user permission. ChatGPT can also write blocks of text in the Writing Tools feature. The proposed change would be much bigger, with Apple running custom versions of Claude (from Anthropic) or ChatGPT (from OpenAI) on its own Private Cloud Compute servers to offer enhanced privacy and security for users.

Apple still plans to develop its own on-device models, which are the only models it currently gives developers access to, while Siri would connect to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers to use Anthropic or OpenAI derived models.

According to the report, the investigation into this potential solution is still early, and Apple hasn’t made any decision yet.

It’s a hard choice for the company. Morale among its own top AI developers is said to be really poor and it is struggling to hold on to talent, while competitors like Meta and Open AI are offering huge pay packages for top talent. Switching to an non-Apple model would further harm morale and might cause talent to leave—if Apple is going to use models from third-party companies, why not go work there, where the pay is better?

On the other hand, Apple can’t afford to be seen as behind in AI, and Siri is its most visible and oft-used AI product. If Apple keeps using its own models for Siri, it will have to deliver a massive improvement in a relatively short span of time to avoid being seen as far behind on what many see as the most important technology trend in a generation.