Apple Wires Siri to Swap In Claude or ChatGPT, Code Shows

Apple has built Siri so its brain can be swapped out. In private frameworks inside iOS 27 and the macOS Golden Gate Release Candidate, code sleuth 'pdfu' surfaced two hooks that let third-party AI services stand in for parts of Apple's own model, MacRumors reported, working from a video pdfu shared on X.

"iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate have private hooks that let apps add Siri Extensions and replace Siri AI's server backend with third-party models," pdfu wrote. In one demo, a macOS user brings up the 'Search or Ask' bar, picks Claude from an 'Ask…' contextual menu, and asks Claude to set a reminder in Apple's Reminders app. When the task needs system access, Claude hands it back to Siri.

The first mechanism is a Model Delegation API in App Intents, which slots a third-party model into Siri's UI as an extension. The second, an Inference Provider protocol inside Model Manager Services, goes further: it lets an outside model receive Apple's Siri planner prompt and tool definitions and replace Apple's server-side model outright. pdfu's demonstration swaps in GPT-5.6 Terra. Third-party models plugged in this way get the same system access as Apple's Private Cloud Compute, including the ability to request user data and make tool calls that change System Settings.

None of it is user-facing yet. The 'Ask…' menu currently only lists Apple's built-in ChatGPT extension, and Apple has not opened the model delegation entitlement to any outside developer. 9to5Mac put it flatly: "You cannot yet activate this – it's visible in the code but not currently enabled."

The plumbing lines up with what the European Commission has been pushing under the Digital Markets Act, which requires Apple to give third parties 'effective access to iOS hardware and software features available to Apple's own services' and extends that principle to Siri. It also lands on a recurring beat for our AI Assistants tracker, where Apple's model-swap story keeps circling back through Anthropic and OpenAI as the likely first tenants.