Siri has been for years now one of the most iconic parts of the Apple experience for years. From its usefulness to jokes about its “behavior” to people having conversations with the assistant, many cannot imagine a world in which Siri is not there to tend to their every need and answer their every question. It was, to a point, Artificial Intelligence before Artificial Intelligence was a thing. But now, Apple has (by force) opened iOS to third-party apps and now Siri could be disappearing from iPhones.
Just over a year ago, Apple was forced to make this change and it became one of the biggest changes in iPhone history, but it allowed users in the European Union to be able to install apps through stores like the Alt Store. This was an unprecedented move as until then Apple had very carefully curated which companies could interact with their interface, with early users still remembering the ripple that Microsoft office caused when it released a version that was compatible with Apple.
The next step seems to be opening up the field so that users can change the virtual assistant that iPhones come with to any other assistant on the market.
The future of Siri considering the new EU regulations
The story broke on Bloomberg, where Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett revealed that, according to their sources, Apple is beginning to rework some of their proprietary iOs in order to be able to adapt to a planned European Union regulation that will force them to allow users to replace Siri with other voice assistants.
While many might think that this is not relevant and that the European Union could not force Apple to make these kinds of changes, the reality is that if they want to continue to operate within the Union’s borders they will need to comply with the regulations that they pass, and this latest piece of legislation forces companies to allow users to install third-party stores or replace default apps.
Siri is Apple’s default assistance, but with the rise of Artificial Intelligence they are not the only one or the most competent at answering queries, and that means users could be stuck using an inferior resource when others are available to take its place, and the European Union does not tend to like that.
However, it is important to remember that his has not been confirmed by the company, just reported on, so we will have to wait for Apple to comment on the matter. The thing that we do know is that these rumors have been swirling at the same time as the new Siri has been announced.
This happened during WWDC 2024, when Apple announced an improved version of its voice assistant, which was scheduled to arrive in the fall of last year, although this ultimately ended up not happening due to several problems arising with the new software. We will not have to wait long though, as the new assistant is meant to become an upgrade at some point in 2026, which should give the company enough time to work out any remaining bugs in the system.
But this was not the only announcement made during WWDC. Perhaps one even bigger change is that Apple is planning to integrate with ChatGPT, the new Artificial Intelligence marvel that has taken the world by storm. Thanks to this new partnership, Apple will be able to use the OpenAI chatbot to resolve queries that Siri is unable to answer. Apple had already announced that it was working to offer more integrations in the operating system, and it is expected that the company will allow users to use Gemini in the same way that ChatGPT currently does. Regarding this, Bloomberg reports that Apple is in talks with Perplexity.