When Apple introduced a new and improved version of its digital assistant, Siri, at its developer conference in June, an employee showed off what the assistant could do.
After the employee asked Siri about a dessert his daughter had mentioned, the assistant found her text message about coconut cookies. It then included the cookies in a party menu it shared with a group chat.
But try doing that with WhatsApp, and Apple’s new assistant, Siri AI, will say it can’t find any messages because it lacks access to the messaging app.
Siri AI, which is expected to become available to the general public this year, is an indicator of what Silicon Valley believes is coming for computing: artificial intelligence agents that control apps and browse the web on behalf of a user.
Apple’s success with Siri AI hinges in large part on third-party developers, who have a lot at stake. If developers allow their apps to work with Siri AI, the apps could become more useful on Apple’s devices by making their content easier to find. But big brands such as Amazon, Google and Meta could also risk sidelining their own assistants, or making it more difficult to add A.I. to their apps in the future.
So far, whether developers will plug into Siri AI remains an open question. As of last week, some staple apps, including Gmail and WhatsApp, were not working with an early version of Siri AI that is available to app developers, and it’s unclear whether they will.
Amazon, which has been promoting its own A.I. agent, Alexa+, offers minimal support for Siri AI in its Amazon shopping app. Asking Siri AI to order paper towels from Amazon will launch the app and do a search for the item but stop short of placing an order. Amazon did not immediately comment on whether it had plans to expand support.
Google, which declined to comment, has not updated its Gmail app to include support for Siri AI. The search giant offers a similar feature for users to find emails in the Gmail app by talking to its A.I. assistant, Gemini.
Meta also declined to comment on its plans for Siri AI.
If larger companies, like Amazon, Google and Meta, work with Siri AI, they risk having consumers choose to use Apple’s assistant instead of their own. Much like the mobile platform war, when they failed to sell their own smartphones, they could cede power to Apple again.
While some surveys have found that developers are generally excited about Siri AI, other reports have said companies are dragging their feet because of concerns about being controlled by Apple.
The mixed support from developers has repercussions for Apple’s ambitious plans for Siri AI. When Siri AI is rolled out to consumers this year, it is likely to be able to use some apps but not others, which could create a confusing experience that turns off iPhone owners from using the assistant.
“Across the board, that is the worst,” said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst at Creative Strategies, a research firm. “You don’t know what you can and can’t do, so you end up not doing it.”
After the decades-long mobile platform war, which ended with Apple owning the most lucrative app store and Google controlling the most popular operating system, the technology industry is shifting to a different fight over developing the most capable A.I. assistant.
Many Silicon Valley executives believe the chatbots and agents being developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and now Apple could supersede operating systems like the iOS software that powers the iPhone. Instead of people ordering groceries, hailing taxis and replying to messages with their devices, A.I. agents could someday handle those tasks.
Apple had similar ambitions for the past version of Siri. In 2011, Apple introduced Siri with a demonstration of the assistant pulling up a list of Greek restaurants and providing the time in Paris. At the time, Siri was groundbreaking, and competitors like Amazon and Google soon followed with their own versions of an assistant.
But Siri languished over the next decade. In 2016, Apple opened up Siri, so people could use third-party apps like Uber and Lyft by talking to the assistant. But by then, consumers had broadly become disenchanted with Siri and used it for simple tasks like checking the weather and setting a timer.
In 2024, Apple said it would revamp Siri. That effort floundered, culminating in the company’s postponing its upgrade to the assistant. Apple is now taking another stab at improving Siri. In June, the company introduced Siri AI as a more capable and conversational assistant.
When Siri AI publicly debuts this year, it will not start from square one with developers. If developers set up tasks with the past version of Siri, like calling for a ride through Uber or Lyft, those actions will still work with Siri AI.
But to test Siri AI’s new abilities, developers have to adopt Apple’s new framework for the assistant. Apple doesn’t have many incentives to encourage developers to adopt that framework, aside from telling them that it will make their apps more helpful and engaging to users.
“It’s going to be a spectrum of who plays ball and who doesn’t, how deeply they integrate anything,” said David Barnard of RevenueCat, a company that helps brands manage subscriptions to their apps.
Developers could treat Siri AI as just a way for users to open their apps, or they could “go as deeply as they can,” Mr. Barnard said.
Smaller developers, too, may think twice about working with Siri AI. For developers, it could also close the door to adding their own A.I. features to their apps, or having users pay them for those features.
A.I. assistants could also introduce privacy risks, like inadvertently leaking people’s private conversations through a security breach, said Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation, which develops the encrypted messaging app Signal, in a recent interview.
“The question is, is this just going to displace all apps?” said Eric Seufert, a mobile advertising analyst who runs Mobile Dev Memo, a blog about the app economy. He added that developers will be asking: “In the long run, how much does integrating whittle away at my relationship with the consumer and hurt the business?”
The post Key App Developers Have Yet to Embrace Apple’s New Siri A.I. appeared first on New York Times.
