Apple's Siri Dilemma: OpenAI's ChatGPT Voice Emerges as Potential Replacement

ChatGPT Voice as a Siri replacement? Sam Altman's on board - and so am I

The recent iPhone 17 launch gave AI, the darling of Apple's WWDC 2024 keynote and iPhone 16 launch, barely a mention until right at the very end, when Tim Cook mentioned the power of Apple Intelligence. Sure, Apple Intelligence is alive and well in iOS 26, and it does a perfectly good job of giving you AI writing tools, image generation, Genmoji, Visual Intelligence for identifying objects, and notification summaries. Ok, maybe notification summaries have been a bit of a sore point for Apple, but by and large, Apple Intelligence does a great job of blending a range of useful AI tools into the options on your iPhone without you having to launch a separate app. The fly in the ointment is Siri. In a world of intelligent chatbots that can hold conversations, Siri is still a basic voice assistant in comparison. The conversational ability of Siri really hasn't moved forward at all in the last few years. Rather than continue a conversation, it would rather resolve your request into links to helpful websites. If your question is too complex, it will hook up to ChatGPT and give you a (text-based) answer from OpenAI, but this extra step uses up those precious seconds of my impatience buffer. It would be so much nicer if Siri morphed into a fully-featured AI companion, like ChatGPT or Gemini's voice modes. Of course, you can run ChatGPT and Gemini apps on the iPhone without a problem, but having them baked into the operating system as a part of Siri would make the experience of using AI seem more integral to the iPhone. It also feels like I'm not alone in this. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was recently asked if he could get Apple to replace Siri with ChatGPT Voice, and tweeted that he's "supportive" of the idea. Of course, he would be. Which CEO of a powerful multimodal AI chatbot with relatively few revenue streams wouldn't want Apple to come knocking on their door with a big cheque book? It's been rumored for a few days now that Apple is in talks with Google to give Siri an upgrade and I don't really mind which AI brain powers an upgraded Siri, just so long as I'll be able to ask Siri a simple question like, "What's in the news today?", and get a reply, not a list of web links. I want Siri to be able to hold a conversation, search the web, or teach me about a new subject. In fact, I just want it to be able to do everything I can do with Gemini or ChatGPT voice modes right now, and I think Apple has missed the boat. The iPhone 17 Pro might be the best iPhone for running Apple Intelligence right now, but Apple Intelligence should have been so much more by this point.

OpenAI chief wants ChatGPT to replace Siri on iPhones

ChatGPT Voice mode is noticeably chattier and smatter than Siri. Will Apple accept it? One of the most surprising aspects of Apple's "awe-dropping" Fall launch event for the iPhone 17 series was AI. The company barely talked about it, or any new enhancements that are coming to Apple Intelligence or Siri. But it seems a major rival (and partner) is ready to jump on the opportunity with a radical idea and fix the Siri experience. What's the plan? OpenAI co-founder and chief, Sam Altman, was musing on Twitter about how the new slate of Apple smartphones seemed like a worthy upgrade that he has "really wanted." Responding to his post, another AI company executive asked him to get Siri replaced with ChatGPT's conversational Voice mode. Altman expressed enthusiasm over the suggestion, adding that he was supportive of the "great idea." To recall, OpenAI is already an exclusive Apple partner and supplies the underlying AI tech that powers some of the core Apple Intelligence features, such as Writing Tools, and also works alongside Siri. Recommended Videos Moroever, when you ask Siri a question that it can't handle, the question is handed off to ChatGPT. These features are enabled using a ChatGPT Extensions system, which users can choose to disable from within the Settings app. The future of Siri could go beyond ChatGPT Apple's dependence on ChatGPT to fix the functional gaps of Siri could undergo a major change next year. The company's planned "AI brain transplant" will reportedly pave the way for launching "LLM Siri," a smarter and more conversational version with a similar tech foundation as ChatGPT and Gemini. Interestingly, the plans could change if Apple's own work with AI doesn't catch up. The company has reportedly asked Anthropic and OpenAI to train test versions of Claude and ChatGPT, respectively, that will run on Apple's own cloud infrastructure and power the next-gen Siri experience. Recently, it appears that Google's Gemini has also entered the negotiations. "The iPhone maker recently approached Alphabet Inc.'s Google to explore building a custom AI model that would serve as the foundation of the new Siri next year," reports Bloomberg.