Siri AI has only just arrived, and Apple is already thinking about the next step. In his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that John Ternus has told Craig Federighi to speed up Apple’s software roadmap, and that Siri could start working like an AI agent as early as next year. Apple has also tweaked how it builds iOS 28.
What’s official
Apple hasn’t announced anything. All we have from Apple is what Ternus said on the November 2 earnings call, his first as CEO: he called agentic capabilities promising tools for users, said Siri is mostly request-based today, and said there’s room to expand what it can do, with privacy front and center.
The rumor
- A closed-door meeting: in recent weeks, Ternus reportedly told Federighi that Apple needs to accelerate its software and move beyond the necessary fixes to Siri.
- Siri as an agent, maybe in 2027: Gurman believes Apple wants to go in that direction and could get there next year. He compares it with always-on agents like OpenAI’s Dots, Meta’s Muse and Grok. What it would look like in practice is unknown.
- A new split for iOS 28: Apple divides each release into three eight-week milestones, usually four weeks of coding and four of “convergence,” when features are integrated. In the first milestone of iOS 28, iPadOS 28 and macOS 28, engineers got six weeks of coding and just two of convergence. Gurman didn’t reveal specific features.
What it means for you
If Apple sticks to its usual calendar, iOS 28 will be unveiled at WWDC in June and ship in September 2027, so an agentic Siri wouldn’t arrive any earlier. The good news for US users: Siri AI is already available here, so anything more autonomous would most likely land in the US first. In the EU, by contrast, Siri AI still isn’t available.
My take
A new CEO pushing this hard says a lot: Apple doesn’t want to fall two years behind again. The pieces are already there. Now that Siri AI is open to all developers, Siri can take action inside apps, and an agent is the logical next step. The challenge is trust: an assistant that does things without being asked has to get them right almost every time, and Apple is more cautious with permissions than its rivals. I’d rather it arrive a year later and done right than repeat what happened with the first “smart” Siri.
Would you let Siri do things for you without checking in at every step? Let me know in the comments or on social media.
Sources: Bloomberg (Mark Gurman’s Power On), MacRumors (Siri as an agent), MacRumors (iOS 28 development), 9to5Mac (Ternus on the earnings call). As of November 9, 2026.
