Sneak peek at new Siri app reveals Apple’s plans to take on ChatGPT and more

Sneak peek at new Siri app reveals Apple's plans to take on ChatGPT and more | TechCrunch

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Image Credits:Illustration: 731; Photo: Sam Hall/Bloomberg AI

Sneak peek at new Siri app reveals Apple’s plans to take on ChatGPT and more

Sarah Perez

7:45 AM PDT · May 28, 2026

Just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, Bloomberg has published leaked renders of what Apple’s planned AI upgrade could look like on iPhone — including a brand-new Siri app meant to rival ChatGPT and other AI chatbots — as well as how Siri’s new capabilities will be woven throughout the operating system.

The images were produced by Bloomberg based on what it saw and learned from sources.

While you’ll still be able to press a button in iOS 27 to trigger Siri, the animation and response will now emerge from the iPhone’s Dynamic Island — that’s the black pill-shaped area at the top of the screen that today houses Live Activities, the real-time updates and interactive displays from apps that appear directly on the phone’s Home Screen. This mode will work best for quick voice queries or searches, much like how people use Siri currently.

A new mode, however, will put Siri-powered search within easy reach, capitalizing on people’s muscle memory for swiping down on their screen to access Spotlight Search — a built-in way to find information from both your phone and the web in one place. The swipe-down gesture will still open search, but now those searches will draw on the AI-powered Siri, which includes a rebuilt AI model that uses Google’s Gemini AI technology under the hood for added intelligence.

Image Credits:Bloomberg/Illustration: 731; Photo: 731

From here, iPhone users can search, launch apps, start messages, ask about the weather, add calendar appointments, search their notes, and trigger app shortcuts, Bloomberg reports, with results displayed in formatted text in a card-style interface that also emerges from the Dynamic Island.

Apple’s approach to AI is strikingly similar to its earlier multibillion-dollar partnership with Google that made Google the default search engine on iPhone. Just as building a search engine from scratch was never in Apple’s playbook, AI presents a similar calculus — it’s too expensive and complex to go it alone, at least right now. So Apple is working with outside partners for AI technology that users want today, while simultaneously building out its own models, including local AI, that runs on local devices rather than the cloud — an approach that allows Apple to lean into its privacy brand without needing to catch up.

Bloomberg also notes there will be a new standalone Siri app — as previously reported — designed to compete directly with chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others. The app will surface your past chat history and allow you to upload documents and photos, in addition to text.

Scale, as ever, is Apple’s advantage. While ChatGPT now has 900 million weekly active users, Apple’s install base (all devices, not just iPhone) is 2.5 billion — meaning the company has an unmatched runway to introduce AI to people who haven’t yet adopted standalone AI tools.

Topics AI, Apple, Apps, iOS 27, iPhone, siri

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Sarah Perez

Consumer News Editor

Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal.

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