Apple to open Siri to Gemini and Claude: iOS 27 to add support for third-party AI chatbots

Apple is preparing to radically change how Siri works: in iOS 27, users will be able to independently choose which AI chatbot will answer their queries through the voice assistant. For the first time in the product's history, the system will break away from a single partnership and open access to competitors — Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and other models available in the App Store. According to Bloomberg, the feature will be called Extensions.

It will work on iPhone, iPad, and Mac as part of the iOS 27 update. The principle of operation is straightforward: the user enables the desired AI chatbot in settings, and Siri begins to route requests that exceed her built-in capabilities to it. The scheme is not new — this is exactly how the ChatGPT integration already works: when Siri encounters a difficult question, she offers to switch to GPT.

iOS 27 will extend this logic to the entire AI assistant market at once. Historically, Apple built a maximally closed ecosystem: the ChatGPT integration announced at WWDC 2024 was presented as a strategic partnership, not as an open platform for everyone. Extensions changes this philosophy — now any developer of an AI product can potentially become part of Siri if their application is published on the App Store and supports the required interface.

This is a fundamentally different position: not "Siri plus one partner," but "Siri as an orchestrator for the entire market." In parallel, Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing a separate standalone application for Siri — and it too will support Extensions. This expands the scope of changes: competition among AI models will occur not only in the system assistant, but also in a specialized AI application that the company intends to develop as an independent product.

For Google and Anthropic, the opening of Extensions is a strategic opportunity of the first order. Gemini and Claude are already present in the App Store; if Extensions works precisely with installed applications, both companies automatically fall into the category of first available options. For users, this means real choice: ChatGPT by default or Claude for technical tasks, Gemini — for working with Google services.

The context of this news is important. Apple Intelligence, presented in 2024, did not meet expectations: feature delays, limited functionality in a number of markets, general disappointment among part of the audience. Siri still significantly lags behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in the quality of responses to complex queries.

Extensions looks like a pragmatic acknowledgment of the actual state of affairs: instead of racing to improve the quality of its own model, Apple is turning Siri into a universal interface on top of the entire market. This is not weakness — this is a different strategy, fully consistent with the company's position as the controller of the entry point for a billion devices. Apple retains control through a familiar mechanism: the user manages the connected integrations themselves, and all chatbots undergo standard App Store review.

Extensions is not an open API, but a managed showcase. The race for a share in Siri will begin at WWDC 2026.