By Stephen Nellis
June 8 (Reuters) - When Apple holds its developer conference at its Cupertino, California headquarters on Monday, the big draw will be a widely expected overhaul to Siri, the AI assistant the iPhone maker two years ago promised, but failed, to improve.
Siri debuted in 2011 and is accessible through the bulk of Apple's installed base of 2.5 billion devices, but hundreds of millions of consumers have been chatting with apps from OpenAI and Anthropic instead. In China and elsewhere,
consumers are turning to AI agents - bots that can carry out complex tasks on behalf of human users - to manage daily schedules and take care of rote tasks.
But analysts say Apple is still sitting on an AI gold mine in the form of the personal data that lives on every iPhone -- emails, messages, calendar appointments and other information scattered across the operating system and apps. That data could make Siri's answers more useful and make the assistant more helpful and competent at carrying out tasks.
Apple's challenge is that such data is locked down in its operating systems in the name of privacy and security. Third-party apps purposely cannot read data from one another, and even Apple cannot access much of it without a user's permission.
Its task will be unlocking the power of that data, both for itself and for developers.
"They have to make Siri not suck, but Apple also has to put the framework together of how their developers can take advantage of AI themselves," said Patrick Moorhead, founder of tech consulting firm Moor Insights & Strategy. "It sounds kind of boring, but AI is all about data, because data is what creates context and what creates better results."
To be sure, Apple has hardly been punished by Wall Street for its approach to AI. Its shares are up about 50% over the past year, less than the roughly 120% gain of Google parent Alphabet, which has benefited from the success of its Gemini model, but also better than Microsoft's 7% decline in that time. That firm has suffered from being perceived as falling behind the capabilities of rivals such as Anthropic, in part due to Microsoft's close ties to OpenAI.
DEVELOPERS AWAIT SIRI TWEAKS
The most visible moves for Monday will likely be the introduction of a "chat" mode with Siri and a "personal context" option to share that data with the assistant, said Andrew Cornwall, a senior analyst with tech research firm Forrester.
Cornwall expects Apple to let developers plug their apps into Siri using what Apple calls "extensions" and let those developers choose among AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's Gemini in their apps. Apple also might introduce a new method of tapping into the AI processing capabilities of its custom chips, Cornwall said.
The point on which analysts tend to agree is that Apple is likely to frame AI not as a technology but rather as experiences or features that its customers will find helpful. Polls have found the U.S. public uneasy about AI, and while Apple customers in other major markets such as China view AI more positively, Apple has historically never embraced technology for technology's sake.
While Nvidia and Microsoft this year have spent time trying to tame OpenClaw, a technology that can direct an army of AI agents on a personal computer to log into a user's online services and carry out tasks for business users, Ben Bajarin, CEO of tech consultancy Creative Strategies, does not expect Apple to follow suit just yet.
Bajarin said he does not expect Apple to put much emphasis on emerging technologies like OpenClaw, which still have potential security issues.
"It's way too early for the consumer," Bajarin said. "Honestly, I'm not even sure businesses are ready for this in an uncontrolled context."
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by David Gaffen)
