Apple chief executive John Ternus pushes Siri toward agentic AI

Apple chief executive John Ternus pressed software chief Craig Federighi in a closed-door meeting in recent weeks to speed up the Siri roadmap and move beyond routine improvements, according to reporting by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Ternus called agentic AI capabilities (AI that can act on its own to complete tasks) “promising” during Apple’s first earnings call under him on Nov. 2. Gurman reported that Apple wants to make Siri AI more agentic, and he said, “I believe the company could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year.” Until then, the usable Siri AI features remain those in iOS 27.3, which Apple plans to release in December. The iOS 27.3 beta adds Siri AI actions in 15 Apple apps.

Siri AI arrived with iOS 27 on Sept. 14, delivering on many promises from 2024 but remaining more limited than rival AI systems. The assistant cannot carry out lengthy agentic tasks in the background and still works request by request. Apple called its September 2026 launch the best version of the personal agent it has ever released, yet weeks after launch Siri still feels dated. It now chats like other AI chatbots, answers deeper questions, and uses on-screen awareness and personal context from photos, e-mails and texts.

The assistant can answer questions, write e-mails and texts, set reminders, pull web information, read on-screen content and access private device data, such as collecting trip details from messages to send in an e-mail. The assistant uses local processing to securely evaluate user data across native apps, enabling multistep actions such as pulling event details from Messages and writing a calendar update in one flow. A dedicated Visual Intelligence mode in the camera app analyzes physical settings in real time without transmitting data to the cloud. These features shipped with iOS 27 on Sept. 14 on the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and the foldable iPhone Duo.

Ternus said during Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings talk on Nov. 2 that Siri processes more than 2.5 billion requests per day. Siri AI remains in beta, and eligible users must join a waitlist before they can access it. Apple added French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish to Siri AI on Oct. 26, alongside English, although regional restrictions still apply.

Apple rebuilt the Siri AI engine using AI models based on technology it licenses from Google, and first showed the assistant in 2024 before it reached iPhones after a delay of about two years. Last year, following Apple’s removal of John Giannandrea from the AI chief role, Federighi assumed control of the Siri effort, and a working Siri AI came together relatively quickly.

Federighi has a reputation as an AI skeptic because of concerns about privacy, security, societal and employment implications. He plans software work over 12 to 18 months while Apple hardware teams work from multiyear road maps, a gap that has contributed to delays and less ambitious first versions of devices. Some software engineers and designers say Federighi’s hands-on style and habit of arguing hard against proposals he dislikes leaves them little say in product direction.

Apple is adjusting how it builds software for iOS 28 and other upcoming major operating system updates to allow more time for writing code, exploring and building features while reducing time spent deploying changes to the systems. For the first iOS 28 cycle, Apple allotted six weeks to coding and two weeks to integration instead of the usual four weeks each. Employees say they like the development change because it creates more time to come up with and explore ideas before locking things in.

In April 2026, Apple said Tim Cook would leave the chief executive role, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus taking over, and the change took effect on Sept. 1, 2026. During Cook’s developer keynote as chief executive at WWDC 2026 on June 8, he said the Siri work with Google’s Gemini “is going well.” Mike Rockwell, Apple’s vice president of Siri engineering, is considering leaving his role or Apple altogether next year. Rockwell previously led Vision Pro development before taking charge of Siri AI and has reportedly been upset about not receiving enough credit for fixing the digital assistant.

If Rockwell leaves, his Siri AI work could shift to Amar Subramanya, a Google veteran hired last year, and Sebastien Marineau, a Federighi deputy. Apple is deepening its technical tie-up with Google’s Gemini models for the stronger native Siri experience unveiled at WWDC. Future M-series chips may run cut-down frontier models on device at a speed of 30 to 60 tokens per second. ChatGPT remains integrated into Apple Intelligence even as the companies litigate, and Apple’s Siri AI, powered by Gemini rather than OpenAI models, is now the default engine.

On July 10, 2026, Apple sued OpenAI for trade secrets in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that OpenAI ran a coordinated scheme to extract confidential hardware information from former Apple employees. OpenAI pushed back, saying Apple’s security and offboarding practices weaken the legal bar for trade secret protection, and the preliminary injunction motion will be heard on Oct. 1, 2026.

Apple has no interest in winning the model-training arms race and is instead building ownership of the distribution layer that AI companies need to reach consumers. The centerpiece of Apple’s plan is Extensions inside iOS 27, a Settings toggle menu listing every AI app on the device, including Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and Copilot. Turning on an extension plugs a third-party AI directly into Siri, making the assistant a universal front door instead of a single-vendor gatekeeper. The Extensions framework is meant to go beyond voice, letting third-party AI providers power Writing Tools and Image Playground.

WWDC 2026 happened on June 8, and Apple introduced an app that works on its own and ties into Dynamic Island while running Siri AI through Google’s Gemini, but the Siri Extensions framework did not appear in the keynote or the final iOS 27 release on Sept. 14. EU regulatory friction is behind the delayed Extensions rollout because Siri AI is unavailable at launch in the EU due to regulatory constraints, and Apple wants its native Siri AI to prove itself first. Apple collects a 30 percent cut on subscriptions routed through the App Store.

Apple processes data on the device, keeping sensitive user information off the cloud and supporting its long-standing privacy brand. On the earnings call, Ternus said Apple wants users to know what access they are granting to an agent. An acknowledged risk is that relying on outside licenses, especially Gemini, could squeeze ecosystem margins and create dependence on a vendor if Apple’s local model work lags behind external AI progress.

OpenAI’s agents called Dots rolled out around Oct. 2, 2026, and Meta’s Muse passed five million downloads. Meta’s Muse app can independently finish personal tasks like booking a flight and shopping online, and it assists users with booking flights, reserving restaurant tables, ordering groceries and buying clothes online. Announced at WWDC 2026, Apple’s Passwords feature would identify weak or compromised passwords, replace them on each website and store new ones in the Passwords app.

Apple has no computer use tool for iPhone, iPad or Mac that reads the screen, moves a cursor, clicks buttons and types into apps, unlike ChatGPT and Claude. Running agents on a Mac is now as easy as installing Muse, so anyone can do it even without understanding what they are doing.

AI agents are designed to run on their own and often need near-total access to devices and data, and a poisoned prompt hidden on a website can hack an agent and lead it to hand hackers access to bank accounts. Apple warned in a developer forum update called Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS that developers are asking users to open up everything on their Macs, covering messages, mail and browsing history, even though users may not grasp the consequences.

Full Disk Access has traditionally been reserved for backup apps that need the whole disk to function, and Apple says privacy implications extend beyond the user because communication apps demanding it also compromise the people the user chats with. Apple will introduce additional controls to ensure users who genuinely wish to grant Full Disk Access can only do so with very explicit user action, because the threat will grow as AI agents improve and become more autonomous.

About 50 percent of Apple’s revenue comes from selling high-margin iPhones, and management estimates gross margins will be around 47 percent. Last month, Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in an investor note that Muse might eat into Apple’s services revenue by handling web purchases outside Apple’s ecosystem. Apple benefits from owning the hardware, operating systems and silicon people use today, while OpenAI and other AI companies develop their own hardware and Meta has announced the Muse Charm keychain device for the Muse agent.

Apple’s installed base of active devices reached a record high across all major product categories and regions, surpassing 2.5 billion devices. Apple authorized a new 100 billion dollar share repurchase program with its fiscal Q2 2026 results and raised its quarterly dividend 4 percent to 0.27 dollars per share.

Apple spent roughly 4.3 billion dollars on capital expenditures across the first half of its fiscal year, and research and development spending surged 33 percent year over year to 11.42 billion dollars in the fiscal Q2 2026 quarter.

A March-quarter record of 111.2 billion dollars was reached for total revenue, up 17 percent year over year, and services revenue reached a record high of 30.98 billion dollars. Fiscal Q3 2026 set June-quarter records with revenue of 109.4 billion dollars, up 16 percent year over year, iPhone revenue of 54.3 billion dollars, up 22 percent, and services revenue of 30.7 billion dollars.

John Ternus has expressed frustration over what he views as reluctance to adopt AI at the same urgency as competitors. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter that Ternus pushed Federighi to move faster on AI because competitors are moving with more urgency.