By Apple will open Siri to third-party AI chatbots in iOS 27, complete with a dedicated App Store section for AI integrations. The move looks like user choice. It reads more like a distribution play with regulatory insurance built in.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported this week that a new "Extensions" system will let providers like Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and Perplexity plug directly into Siri, ending ChatGPT's exclusive integration that has been in place since iOS 18. Reuters confirmed the reporting. The announcement is expected at WWDC on June 8, with the feature shipping across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27.
What Apple actually announced
The mechanics, drawn from pre-release builds of the operating system, are more specific than the headline suggests. Text discovered in test versions reads: "Extensions allow agents from installed apps to work with Siri, the Siri app and other features on your devices," according to 9to5Mac. Users will manage their connected AI services through a toggle menu in Settings, and Apple will funnel discovery through a dedicated Extensions section in the App Store.
The current ChatGPT setup is a simple handoff: Siri can't answer a question, so it offers to pass the query to OpenAI's model with user permission. Extensions generalize that pattern. According to Reuters, users may be able to choose which AI service handles each individual request, not just set a single global default. If that holds, this is per-task routing, not a preference toggle. You could summarize an email with one model and draft the reply with another.
AI providers will need to update their apps to support the new API before integration goes live, according to MacRumors. The marketplace won't be fully populated on day one.
Apple is also testing a standalone Siri app that functions more like ChatGPT or Claude, with text and voice modes and conversation history, per Gurman's March 29 Power On newsletter. That app will also support the Extensions system.
The distribution math
The surface framing is user choice. The structural reality is that Apple controls the storefront, the discovery mechanism, and the payment rails for an industry it has mostly watched from the sidelines.
Apple's installed base runs to roughly two billion active devices. Its standard 30% App Store commission applies to subscriptions purchased through the store. Every user who navigates from Siri's Extensions menu to download Claude or Perplexity is being routed through a marketplace Apple owns and monetizes.
This is Apple's oldest strategic move applied to AI: own the front door, set the terms, let others compete for shelf space. The company's fiscal 2025 capital expenditure came in at $12.7 billion, a figure that looks modest next to the roughly $700 billion in AI-related CapEx that Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta collectively guided toward for 2026, per AOL's analysis. Apple isn't trying to win the model race. It's positioning itself to tax whoever does.
There is a repair job embedded in this, too. The past year damaged Apple's AI credibility: Apple Intelligence summaries that got facts wrong, ads promoting Siri features that still hadn't shipped as of March 2026, and the departure of longtime AI chief John Giannandrea. Bloomberg Law noted that the Siri overhaul is explicitly aimed at reversing Apple's lag relative to competitors. Opening to third-party models is the fastest route to a capable assistant without waiting for homegrown AI to catch up.
The regulatory backdrop matters more than Apple admits
The timing of this announcement runs parallel to escalating regulatory pressure on virtual assistants in Europe. On March 23, the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand (ACT), representing Europe's largest commercial broadcasters, asked EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera to bring virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa under Digital Markets Act gatekeeper designation.
No virtual assistant has been designated a DMA gatekeeper yet. But the broadcasters argue that AI assistants already function as "de facto gatekeepers for media content through mobile phones, smart speakers and in-car radio infotainment services," according to 9to5Mac's coverage of the Reuters report. ACT says the absence of regulation has created a "regulatory void."
Apple has been through this before. The company opened iOS to alternative app stores and browser engines under DMA pressure. It opened NFC payments. Each time, Apple framed compliance as a choice it was already making. Extensions fits that pattern: announce the opening on your own terms before regulators mandate it on theirs.
I want to be careful not to overstate the causal link. Apple hasn't said Extensions is a DMA response, and Gurman's reporting frames it as a strategic AI pivot. But the overlap is hard to ignore. A company that spent years fighting every interoperability mandate now volunteering to let competitors into its most personal user interface, right as European regulators debate whether to classify that interface as a gatekeeper service? The timing speaks even if Apple doesn't.
The competitive wrinkle nobody is talking about
There is a structural advantage already baked into this system that deserves more attention. Apple confirmed earlier this year that Google's Gemini models will power the more capable Siri experience it plans to ship in 2026. That deal gives Gemini a position inside Siri's core intelligence layer, not as an Extension, but as infrastructure.
Extensions-based providers, by contrast, sit one layer removed. They're available when users explicitly route queries to them. Gemini, to some degree, is already running under the hood. The distinction matters because it means "open" doesn't mean "equal." Claude and Perplexity compete for opt-in attention. Gemini gets default presence.
Who actually gets into the Extensions marketplace is also an open question. Access requires meeting Apple's standards on privacy, safety, and payment processing. Those criteria aren't public yet. If the bar is high or the commercial terms are unfavorable, smaller AI providers may not participate, leaving users with a Settings menu featuring the same four or five dominant names dressed up as choice.
What to watch
Three things will determine whether Extensions is a genuine competitive opening or managed optionality.
First, the API terms. What Apple requires of providers to participate, and what data they get access to (or don't), will define whether this marketplace attracts meaningful competition or just the companies big enough to accept Apple's conditions.
Second, the default structure. If Gemini retains a privileged backend position while Extensions providers compete for explicit user selection, the playing field isn't level. Regulators in Brussels will notice.
Third, the 30% question. AI subscriptions purchased through the Extensions storefront will presumably fall under Apple's standard App Store commission. For AI companies already operating on thin margins, that cut could shape whether participation is economically viable. We've seen this tension play out across the broader AI industry, where the economics of running frontier models are already brutal.
Apple is framing Extensions as giving users more choice. That's true in the narrow sense that you'll be able to pick your chatbot. But the company also gets to set the terms of that choice, control the storefront, collect the commission, and maintain a privileged partnership with the one provider wired into Siri's foundation. The AI App Store may be open for business. The landlord still owns the building.
Paul Menon covers AI policy and regulation for The Daily Vibe.
