Apple Inc. is reportedly considering using artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI or Anthropic PBC to power its digital assistant Siri, as the company, once at the bleeding edge of technology and design, falls far behind rivals in developing cutting-edge AI models.

According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple has held talks with both OpenAI and Anthropic. The discussions also included asking both companies to train versions of their models that could run on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for testing. The report also claims that so far, Apple is leaning toward Anthropic as the better choice for Siri’s needs.

Apple already offers ChatGPT from OpenAI in Siri via its Apple Intelligence feature, thought ChatGPT is available only as a user-driven, opt-in extension. What Apple is now considering is choosing ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude to power Siri itself.

Apple’s investigation into third-party models is reportedly at an early stage and the company hasn’t made a final decision. Apple also apparently has an internal competing project dubbed LLM Siri that uses in-house models. It remains in active development and still could be the direction Apple goes, though internal models are claimed to be well behind AI offerings already on the market.

Gurman argues that if Apple were to switch to using Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT models for Siri, it would be an acknowledgment that the company is struggling to compete in generative AI, and he would be right.

The company that debuted world-changing devices such as the iPod and the iPhone has struggled to innovate since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, with launches such as the Apple Vision Pro flopping and the company struggling to innovate amid a sea of competitors. Sadly for Apple fans, AI is the latest area that Apple has fallen behind.

Apple may not abandon internal efforts and there’s no guarantee that it won’t push ahead with its in-house efforts, with a new partnership with Anthropic or OpenAI perhaps complementing Apple-designed large language models. But what is clear is that Apple — far behind Google LLC with its Gemini Models, which are baked into Android, let alone standalone providers — that it’s running out of time.

If Apple goes into next year at a time when AI is revolutionizing the world with Siri not being able to tell users what the current month is – which it remarkably can’t – the company even runs the real risk of even its core user base starting to think twice about its technology and products.

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