Siri Beware? IPhone May Soon Let You Choose Your Own Voice Assistant

It looks like iPhone users could soon be able to switch to alternative voice assistants from Siri, at least in the EU. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple could be planning to announce a change in the European Union that will allow iPhone users to change their default assistant from Siri to the one that best fits their needs and preferences. The same report has also shed some light on Apple’s progress with its Siri assistant.

You could soon switch to alternative voice assistants like Gemini on your iPhone

If Bloomberg’s report is correct, Siri will no longer have dibs on iPhone users’ artificial intelligence assistant requirements. Apple has already tried hard to deal with the regulatory changes in the EU, like the Digital Markets Act (DMA). It now appears that Siri could be the next victim in the Cupertino tech giant’s ecosystem from those regulatory requirements. Apple is now working to meet the EU’s guidelines that affect Siri.

Specifically, Apple is reportedly working to enable alternative voice assistants to operate on iPhones in Siri’s place. Under the rules, iPhone users in the EU will be able to choose a third-party voice assistant like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Bloomberg has cited “a person with knowledge of the work” as the source of the information.

It’s worth mentioning that Apple currently allows iPhone users to ask Siri to pass verbal queries over to ChatGPT. However, the upcoming change could eliminate the step of using Siri as a go-between with the third-party digital assistant platforms.

As always for Apple’s changes, it’s not clear when this functionality will eventually emerge in the EU. Also, don’t expect Apple to open the door for alternative iPhone voice assistants in other regions like the US any time soon.

Apple is pushing to turn Siri into a true ChatGPT competitor

Furthermore, the report indicates that Apple is testing its own chatbot internally. It has made significant progress in competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the past few months. The source claims that Apple’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, was initially reluctant to turn Siri into a chatbot similar to ChatGPT or Gemini. However, Apple executives are now pushing to turn Siri into a true ChatGPT competitor.

Apple executives allegedly believe that the latest version of the company’s internal chatbot is “on par with recent versions of ChatGPT.” Besides, the source suggests that Apple isn’t planning to launch any major updates to Siri at the WWDC event next month. At the latest, Apple’s Siri, powered by LLMs, could debut later in the iOS 19 update cycle.