It's time for more Siri openness in the Apple ecosystem

Siri’s long-awaited personalized upgrade won’t arrive until 2026, putting Apple even further behind in the industry AI race and frustrating users. While many think Big Tech giants OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft will continue to be leaders for years to come, Apple has an opportunity to join the ranks.

Unlike its competitors, Apple’s unique vision for AI isn’t about launching another chatbot. Instead, it aims to create intelligence that quietly enhances the features people use every day through a seamless, system-wide experience.

Apple’s App Intents is a meaningful first step in this direction, connecting apps with Siri, Shortcuts, and new Spotlight. It already resembles the foundation of modern AI agents. But right now, it is limited to being discoverable and used by Apple software, leaving third-party developers out of the mix and closed off from building AI assistants.

If Apple wants to make up lost ground in the AI race, it must open its ecosystem and invite developers in, not lock them out. Opening App Intents to third-party AI assistants is the key. In doing so, Apple can both support its vision of integrated intelligence while providing powerful solutions for billions of users.

The “Walled Garden” of Apple

App Intents could be a breakthrough for AI-powered automation, but it remains locked behind Apple’s walled garden.

Apple has introduced a set of predefined domains (like Photos and Mail), and only apps that conform to these templates can integrate with system-level AI features. While you can extend Siri or Spotlight using this framework, developers building their own assistants are excluded from the same system-level integrations. Apple’s approach limits broader innovation and keeps the most powerful capabilities reserved for its solutions.

This leaves third-party developers having to build custom workarounds — re-creating similar integration logic on their own, app by app. It’s inefficient and unnecessary. A more open App Intents framework would let developers plug into Apple’s system-level AI features natively, enabling use cases like “Add this email to my task manager,” or “Send this screenshot to my design team,” without requiring custom flows.

What’s emerging instead is a fragmented developer landscape, resulting in developers building their own micro-AI features, none of them interoperable. It’s reminiscent of the early days of digital media, when competing audio codecs, or file formats, made life harder for both users and creators. The same could happen here, resulting in inconsistent, duplicated AI efforts, simply because Apple has yet to offer a shared integration model.

Openness as the Solution

A more open App Intents framework could change that and spur real innovation across the board. Apple could enable all AI assistants, not just Siri, to plug into the system workflows using a format like Modular Capability Protocol (MCP), which is becoming the industry standard. A shared integration model supported by Apple would align with the company’s vision of seamless intelligence and give users real choice.

Apple is known for its strong approach to security, meaning this may be the reason it’s reluctant to open App Intents. Allowing any application to trigger App Intents could have dangerous consequences. But Apple provides security technologies like TCC (Transparency Consent and Control), notarization, Gatekeeper, and others to protect the user. Additionally, providing more transparency helps to strengthen security by allowing a wider, more diverse group of engineers the opportunity to spot vulnerabilities.

These kinds of decisions, of course, take time, and thoughtful deployment is essential. But developers also need open access to core system features. Apple’s announcement to open up its LLMs is a good start, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Until developers are invited deeper into the stack and given access to Siri, App Intents, system-wide actions, and beyond, the platform will remain closed off from the very community that could help Apple achieve its AI vision.

While Apple was first to introduce a voice assistant in 2011, it failed to build on that early lead. In recent years, nearly all meaningful innovation in AI has happened outside its ecosystem. And by locking developers out, Apple risks making that the new norm.

But it’s not too late. Fifteen years after the first Siri demo, no other company sparks as much excitement as Apple when it releases new products. With over two billion active devices, Apple still has the power to shape the future of AI.