A new report claims that Apple will open up the iPhone to allow users to choose a different default voice assistant instead of Siri. This is big news, and it’s quite unexpected.
If the report is right, this capability will come to users in the EU — though other countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. will be studying how it goes to see if they should enforce such changes as well.
Additionally, when Apple opened up its NFC hardware to allow companies like PayPal make payments without using Apple Pay, Apple revealed that this capability would come to countries like the U.S. and U.K., for example, as well.
The latest news comes from an in-depth analysis of Siri and Apple Intelligence at Bloomberg by Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett. It’s a long read and discusses how Apple has introduced AI to its systems, culminating in big announcements at last year’s WWDC in June, but then seeing one element stripped away. This was the transformation of Siri with Apple Intelligence.
One of the nuggets tucked away towards the end of the article concerns what comes next for Siri.
“As Apple tries once again to rescue its AI operations, it’s facing some unique external challenges. To meet expected European Union regulations, the company is now working on changing its operating systems so that, for the first time, users can switch from Siri as their default voice assistant to third-party options, according to a person with knowledge of the matter,” the report says.
So, what would this mean, exactly?
“Barring a major leap with Apple’s products, many users may make that switch. In addition to products from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Alphabet, others from innovative startups like DeepSeek continue to crop up,” Bloomberg goes on.
Siri is integrated deeply into the iOS ecosystem, and it’s not clear if other assistants would have the same level of access, though it seems possible. Apple has always resisted these things on security grounds, so it may be there are restrictions here. We’ll see, but for now, if this proves true, it’s remarkable news.
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