2026-04-03 19:53:29
"The ability to influence the behaviour of others and obtain desired outcomes through attraction and co-option." I like the framing of the term "Soft Power" by The British Academy, for my purposes here.1 I think it serves as a succinct explanation for OpenAI's maneuver in acquiring TBPN.2
Yes, the company which just made a big to-do about killing off "side quests" and focusing – including, most notably, killing off their video product Sora – immediately followed that up by buying a video podcast. And yes, they announced it the day after April Fools. And no, it was not a joke. And yes, everyone made that joke.
I too had to dish out my initial snark upon hearing the news. Which was surprising to the point that it's the most I've been messaged by people with varying levels of "WTF?" in recent months. But actually, thinking more about it, and reading over some of the reports and statements, I think it makes some level of sense. I'm not sure it will work the way OpenAI hopes. But it's not the worst idea to try.
First and foremost, OpenAI's CEO of... something,3 Fidji Simo actually lays it out pretty plainly in her remarks on the matter:
As I've been thinking about the future of how we communicate at OpenAI, one thing that's become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn't apply to us. We're not a typical company. We're driving a really big technological shift. And with the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes a responsibility to help create a space for a real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates—with builders and people using the technology at the center.
That pretty much says it all right there. OpenAI clearly does not like the way the current narrative around AI is being framed. And they undoubtedly see the trend where it's shifting even more negative as time goes on, certainly in the US. I might argue, as I have, that a lot of this has to do with the actual messengers and messaging around the technology coming out of the AI labs and companies. But that's a hard thing to change. Steve Jobs, sadly, is not walking through that door. So instead, you take a page from the Don Draper playbook and "change the conversation".
Draper's method to do that would be through advertising. And well, OpenAI has been trying that. It doesn't seem to be working. Another way? Own a media company.
That’s exactly what TBPN has built. So rather than trying to recreate that ourselves, it made a lot of sense to bring them in, support what they’re doing, and help them scale—while keeping what makes them special. A core part of this is editorial independence. TBPN will continue to run their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions. That’s foundational to their credibility, and it’s something we’re explicitly protecting as part of this agreement.
Again, Simo says it right there. Clearly, OpenAI was thinking about building up their own media entity in-house. But while a lot of companies have tried this to varying degrees of success in the era of "going direct", Simo clearly thought it made sense to buy versus build here.4
It's an expensive buy – "low hundreds of millions," reports George Hammond of The Financial Times – certainly when you're going to throw out the actual business (which seemed to be working quite well for them, which is why OpenAI had to pay such a premium). But it's all relative for a company that just raised um, $122B.
But the other important distinction here is that OpenAI is saying they're going to leave the TBPN guys alone to do their thing as they have been with the show. Famous last words and all that, but I do believe that's the intention here because again, to me this is about soft power. That is, this isn't about acquiring TBPN to turn it into a propaganda arm of OpenAI. That would be dumb because obviously that would backfire. Instead, Simo realized that TBPN already had alignment in their mandate to cover the tech world, and AI more specifically, more positively than many other outlets are doing at the moment.5 Spreading such gospel will help OpenAI's own interests quite naturally.
Now, there's a very real and fair question of what happens if that mandate changes. What if, say, AI starts to lead to some outcomes which are actually bad in very tangible ways for society (yes, some will say this is already happening, but I mean indisputable here for the sake of the argument)? Presumably, TBPN's independence would allow them to change their coverage and tone to meet the moment. Obviously, OpenAI – nor TBPN – thinks that will happen. And if it did, OpenAI would probably just cut the show loose.
But that sort of points to what's left unsaid here. That while TBPN may stay the same on paper, in practice, the way others interact with it will change. Is, say, Dario Amodei going to come on the show? Probably not! But that's a bit unfair since he wasn't a guest before the deal. A more interesting one is Mark Zuckerberg, who has been on the show. Will he be back? Probably not any time soon.
Other rivals will be in similar camps. Some may suck it up and go on to reach the audience. And if TBPN can indeed keep growing, fueled by OpenAI's resources, perhaps it will force the hand of Zuck and others to keep playing ball. That's undoubtedly the hope of both the TBPN team and OpenAI here. They have to know that pledge of independence or not, this deal changes those dynamics of the show. They just think they can overcome them. We'll see.
And that ties into the other potential issue here. While TBPN has built up an impressive audience in a relatively short amount of time, the reported 70k regular viewers per episode is obviously tiny compared to any number of other media outlets, let alone endless other shows on YouTube. If TBPN doesn't keep growing, the soft power playbook loses its effectiveness, fast.
Prior to this deal, the TBPN founders have been on the record noting that they didn't need to scale the show to reach a mainstream audience. That they were happy playing in their niche. Which made a lot of sense, it was a good niche that they were monetizing well, clearly! And not raising VC money gave them the optionality of staying in that niche. It was big enough.
This deal changes that equation. They no longer have to monetize, but for the soft power to work, they need to expand their reach. Otherwise they're just talking to the base over and over again. That works for Fox News, but that's a far different scale. And while there's clearly soft power at play there, it's also still a business.
This is just a soft power play. But for that to work, you need actual power. OpenAI is going to need to boost TBPN into something much larger than it is, otherwise, what's the point here? Again, TBPN was already doing what they're doing without the acquisition.
Maybe branching into adjacencies helps them escape the echo chamber effect – they mention events as one area of continued interest – but this is all very TBD for TPBN.
All that said, I still think this is an interesting tactic to try. As Simo notes, and as we're all well aware, OpenAI is not a normal company. The implication is that normal strategies won't work for them – or at least work as well. Clearly, the narrative has kept shifting away from them. Part of that is the macro view of AI (again, certainly in the US), but part of it is also their own self-owns. TBPN will try to help with the former, while founders Jordi Hays and John Coogan will work in-house in their apparent spare time to help with the latter. Will it work? We'll all get to watch in real-time!
I'll just end by quoting Don Draper earlier in the same conversation:
"Your concern over public opinion shows a guilty conscience. But what good is that serving you if what is to be done is already underway?"
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 The term, of course, was popularized by American political scientist Joseph Nye (who also happened to be a British Academy Fellow), in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Nye passed away just a year ago. ↩
2 Yes, while "TB" technically started as "Technology Brothers" – in an ironic sense – "Technology Business Podcast Network" has a decidedly more professional and ESPN ring to it... ↩
3 Technically now "CEO, AGI Deployment" but it's a title that keeps shifting like Ace Rothstein's in Casino. But it's not CEO of the entire company, at least not yet ;) ↩
4 A lesson from her Meta days? ↩
5 Which throws me back to my days, many moons ago, at TechCrunch, where we were constantly levied with such a charge, but instead made it a strength. It was... a very different time, of course. And I swear this is the last time I'll point out that what we were trying to do with OMG/JK wasn't entirely different than TBPN (just more Pardon the Interruption style). ↩
2026-04-01 04:32:42
When it comes to television, there is only really one show that truly matters: the NFL. Programs that win awards and have robust viewership are nice. But they're icing on the cake. The NFL is the cake. Everyone already knows this stat, but it's no less incredible: of the top 20 most-watched programs last year, either 18, 19, or all 20 were NFL games (there's some discrepancy in various ratings).
Which is to say that the NFL has an insanely strong hand when it comes to rights negotiations. Either you have an NFL package or you're simply not a player. It's undoubtedly part of the reason why Warner Bros Discovery had to sell. Yes, they were silly in fumbling their NBA rights, but it's the lack of NFL rights that kills them – or, specifically, keeps their networks shrinking. Their buyer, Paramount Skydance, of course, owns CBS. And CBS owns an NFL package. It's their most important asset. They can leverage it. And boy are they!
And actually, because of the earlier deal which saw Skydance take over Paramount, a change-of-ownership clause was triggered that allows the NFL to renegotiate that package even though the deal isn't up yet. And that, in turn, is going to lead to every other NFL rights holder renegotiating their rights. They technically don't have to, but what are they gonna do, tell the NFL no? Good luck on that next rights negotiation in a few years...
2026-03-30 17:54:26
Smart angle by my friend Steven Levy to not ask Apple about the past on the verge of their 50th anniversary – which Levy was right in the center of covering for nearly the entire run, of course – but about the future. And fitting that Apple dispatched John Ternus – he who would be king – rather than Tim Cook to talk (though Levy also managed to get a comment from Cook at an event, and Apple's longest serving executive, Greg Joswiak – 40 years! – was there too).
When Levy brought up the notion of Apple being behind in AI:
These gentlemen disagree. Apple, they insist, is already at the forefront of the AI revolution. “We were doing AI before we called it AI!” says Joswiak. “Every single great chatbot works great on our products.” Ternus argues that even if Apple didn't take the lead in developing AI technology, it would still benefit. “Our products are the best place people will use the existing AI tools.”
It's not quite as gaslight-y as the interview that Joswiak and Craig Federighi gave after last year's WWDC when asked about the clear downplaying of AI at the event (after touting it the year before and well, you know...), but I just wish they would frame this decidedly less defensively. Something like... "look, we view it as still the very early days of AI, and while we've been working on it for a while, and there have been some fits and starts, no one yet knows exactly how it's going to play out, so we're trying to take a pragmatic approach in our build out and ensure that our devices and platforms are the best place on which to build for that future."
Ternus is much closer in that regard, which is great to see, if he is indeed the next CEO of Apple. After Levy pushes back on their answers, wondering how they can ensure that Apple is the company making the devices of the future if they're not building the cutting edge of AI themselves:
“I would assume you want one of them to be an Apple device, right?” I asked.
The answer seemed to be not necessarily. “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that nothing you just said is incompatible with the iPhone,” Joswiak says. “The iPhone is not going to go away. iPhone is going to serve a very central role in any of those things you’re talking about.”
In the short term, no doubt. Even in the medium term, sure. But Levy reminds him of the framing he's asking about:
Wait—Apple thinks that people will be using the iPhone 50 years from now?
“It's hard to imagine not,” says Joswiak. “That's where everybody else struggles. They don't have an iPhone, and so they’re scrambling for what to do. A lot of what they talk about ends up being accessories for an iPhone. We’re not going to get into future road maps, but I will tell you, iPhones are not going anywhere.” (Despite this bravado, I will be shocked if Apple does not come out with some AI-powered gadget in the coming years.)
50 years from now will be 2076. While it some ways it does feel like technological breakthroughs are happening slower than 50 years ago on the consumer tech end, in other ways, things are moving far faster – including, of course, AI!
Beyond Apple's founding, 1976 was about color TVs, early video games, and microwaves. Big, chunky tech starting in the home that would be refined and miniaturized as things moved digital. It's probably reasonable to think we'll have something akin to an iPhone 50 years from now, but the form factor will be far different. Perhaps something you wear, or a tiny piece of tech that still lives in your pocket, but unfolds into (or syncs with) something more robust depending on the use case. Will that still be an 'iPhone'? That's harder to see. It would be wild if the same branding exists by then – the concept of a "phone" is already a bit silly. But again, some sort of main computing hub still may be around...
That could, of course, be our robots back in our homes running computing workflows agenticly for us and pinging us as needed...
Later in the day I have my greeting with Cook, and immediately ask him about Apple’s next 50 years. He launches into a rhapsodic description of Apple’s people, values, and culture, predicting that no matter what twists lie ahead, those factors will continue to make Apple unique and super successful. “Yes, the technologies of the future will change,” Cook says. “Yes, there will be more products and more categories. All of those things are true, but the things that made Apple. Apple will be the same for the next 50 years, and the next 100 and the next 1,000.”
It's a nice sentiment, but a bit silly. While companies like Nokia, Siemens, and GE are all over 100 years old, they all started life quite differently, of course – Nokia famously as a paper mill! More "pure" tech still around today is probably IBM, which is 125 years old. Given that tech is now central to pretty much everything in modern life, it's certainly reasonable to think some of the current companies will be around in 100 years – 2126 – but undoubtedly most will not. That's just the reality of business. Things go boom and bust – or they get merged out of existence.
A thousand years? 3026. I would make a joke about hoping the world exists by then, but that's too morbid and depressing. So instead I'll make a joke about hoping that Apple has fixed Siri by then to run well on the iPhone 1018 Pro.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2026-03-27 07:27:59
It's not about the money, it's about the message. With the news that Meta and YouTube were being held liable in a case about the harms of their addictive features just two days after Meta was found liable in a separate case around child safeguards, the writing isn't so much as on the wall as it's on the docket. Big Tech is facing a reckoning.
I would say it's about "social media", but well, YouTube isn't really social media.1 And actually I think you can tie this into other tangential topics around the broader tech industry at the moment. Most prominently, the simmering backlash against AI as well. Meta may be the poster child, but again, it feels like the entire Big Tech family is going to get wrapped up in this.
Regardless of the merits of the individual cases, the real read of the (court)room is the macro one. This isn't a moment, it's a movement. And it's spreading. In part because lawmakers have failed to act, and the companies themselves have failed to adequately self-police, now the people are taking matters into their own hands. Those citizens seem sick of everyone glued to their devices at all times. Yes, children especially, but I suspect this distaste runs far deeper. Including within Silicon Valley itself! Add this animosity to the growing anxiety around AI from these very same companies coming to potentially upend livelihoods and... kaboom.
Nearly every story about this latest verdict draws the comparison to the "Big Tobacco" cases from 30 years ago. It doesn't matter what the parallels are, all that matters is that every story is drawing them. This is an absolute optics disaster for Big Tech. And it feels like it's just getting started.
Again, Meta is low-hanging fruit. YouTube perhaps thought they could get away here because again, they're not actually social media. But they cannot. And while TikTok and Snap opted to settle rather than risk this verdict, they're not going to get away from every case. You have to wonder if and when Apple gets roped in as well since they largely control the devices which enables these services. Google will get hit here as well. Perhaps even Microsoft if the contagion spreads to PCs.
When the AI backlash starts in full, certainly OpenAI and Anthropic will be right in the crosshairs. And maybe NVIDIA gets pulled in as well for enabling all of this. Probably even SpaceX, now that they own Xitter and xAI, which are already in the midst of their own various shitshows due to deep fakes and other sketchy content. And once Tesla and SpaceX inevitably merge, we'll have basically all the largest companies in the world wrapped up in these cases. Maybe there's a way to bring Amazon in too thanks to AWS. Or maybe it's Alexa, which seems to want to get more racy at the moment too. Have I mentioned that Oracle is a primary owner of TikTok now?2
Yes, this remains very strange.
In many ways, none of this is surprising. Again, merits of the cases aside, these are the largest companies in the world. I mean that both in terms of market cap and reach, but also in terms of numbers of people they employ. Yet every day now seems to bring a headline about mass layoffs while at the same time posting record profits. It has long been a very weird "best of times/worst of times" dichotomy and AI is accelerating it. People must look at the layoffs constantly happening at Meta and wonder what shot they possibly have to make it in this new world.
And as I've written about before with AI in particular, all of these companies seemingly have some very real messenger issues. That is, the public by and large doesn't seem to like the people peddling the future here. And that's undoubtedly in part because they don't trust them from the immediate past when they were peddling social media and then VR and then crypto and then every other thing seemingly purpose-build, at least narratively, to freak people out or piss them off.
And so here we are, at the dawn of yet another "techlash".3 But this one could be far larger because the fallout from yesterday is running right into the fears for tomorrow.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's happening. And it's happening in no small part because Big Tech is awful with their positioning and posture. Does Facebook cause cancer? No, but you'd never know it based on the backlash. Before long, it will be framed as being worse than cancer.
Big Tech will be fined the equivalent of coins in their couch cushions over and over again and they'll shrug it off over and over again. Has Europe taught us nothing? No, because Europe has learned nothing. Honestly, their endless fines have probably helped teach Silicon Valley the wrong lessons, and to look past the real issues. After all, these are admired companies – in no small part because they're so successful! Which will be true until it is suddenly not. And what I think you can see here is the trend bubbling up that people increasingly don't want to like these companies. They're too big and too powerful. They're like the government. But one you can sue over and over again.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Increasingly, it's just media. Yes, there are algorithms at play, but the same is true at any modern media company now. Which is why it was silly not to frame YouTube as a Netflix competitor in the would-have-been Warner Bros deal. Going forward, YouTube is the main Netflix competitor. Not some other "streaming services" which Netflix long ago left in the dust. ↩
2 And at the rate that Snap's stock keeps falling – now just a $6B company – someone is going to end up owning them too. ↩
3 Strange how Meta/Facebook always seems to be right at the center of these... ↩
2026-03-26 03:55:18
Well, I'd like to say it was fun while it lasted. But the reality is that it barely lasted. I speak, of course, of Sora. And specifically the productized version of OpenAI's video models which launched to much fanfare just a few months ago and quickly rocketed to the top of the App Store. OpenAI brought the axe down so quickly that it apparently surprised both their key partner Disney and even the team internally working on Sora. Even by OpenAI standards, this seems pretty wild.
Of course this also wasn't totally out of left field. A couple weeks ago, a report suggested that Sora was over as a stand-alone app and service. And that seemingly made sense. After the aforementioned initial surge, Sora slowly slid down the download charts and usage seemed to be dwindling over time. As it turns out, much like the Studio Ghibli situation before it, it was a mere viral moment in time. OpenAI is great at creating these, but they're fleeting. That's a problem when you've built a whole service around one.
Sora was the most fun I recalled having with a new app in a while, but I also noted that the key probably wasn't the TikTok-style network, but instead how it eased the creation process for video. I thought individual sharing of such videos was more interesting than pushing them out publicly because clearly most of the novelty was around the insertion of people you knew in the videos. Celebrities inevitably tried to tap into this, but it all felt a bit insincere at best, and cash-grabby at worst.
So yes, it made sense to shift the focus from the app to bring such tools into ChatGPT itself. In particular as the service tried to do more social/collaborative things there – bringing more chat into ChatGPT, as it were.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the roll-up: OpenAI clearly started to freak the fuck out about the traction Anthropic was suddenly seeing.
That mixed with the building push to go public is undoubtedly a big part of what shifted a move to bundle Sora to a move to murder Sora. This is all related. Anthropic is also said to be making moves to go public. And because of their position in the market – in the enterprise market in particular – and their path to profits looking much clearer, this was always going to be a problem for OpenAI. But the moment Claude Code – and tangentially, Claude Cowork – is having probably pushed it all over the edge.
Last week came news that "side quests" would no longer be a part of OpenAI's path. And was there any bigger side quest than Sora? Again, you'd think they could just kill the app and stand-alone service, bringing it into ChatGPT itself – as seemed to be the plan – but the reality there remained just how expensive it was to actually create such videos. OpenAI probably ran then re-ran the numbers. There was just no way to justify it with a straight face if they were truly hoping to paint a path to profitability picture to Wall Street any time soon.
Fine. No fun, but we get it. OpenAI has bigger GPUs to fry.
But what's really wild is shafting Disney in the process. I mean, they're without question the most important entertainment and content company in the world. And OpenAI seemingly did them dirty. The fact that Disney is no longer looking to do the major investment which sure seemed like a good idea to them – checks notes – just three months ago, seems to say a lot.1 You have to imagine OpenAI would still welcome such an investment. They need any and all money! Even without Sora, you have to imagine there was a path to future partnerships here. But no. Not the way OpenAI executed this. Ouch.
And my god how incredibly awkward for Josh D'Amaro, just one week into his new role as CEO of Disney. While Bob Iger put his name on this deal and subsequent PR around it, all indications were that D'Amaro was the one who really pushed for it. And it played up to technology prowess being a key point of his ascension and plan. This plus the news that Fortnite maker (and key Disney partner/investment) Epic is doing massive layoffs this week.. Again, ouch.
Anyway, back to Sora. This sucks. Not because Sora was particularly useful – though I maintain it was good fun, even now opening it, I get sucked into a rabbit hole that I fill with laughter. I wasn't getting sucked in nearly enough for it to make sense stand-alone, but certainly the technology was compelling! Which is why Google, Meta, and others have been working on video models as well, obviously. It looked like OpenAI had played them with the Disney deal, until they realized that they played themselves.
Was it an IP minefield? No doubt. Did it raise some very real ethical questions about raising the dead to have them do dumb shit in viral videos? For sure. But it was also pretty fun. And very funny. And wonderfully simple to use.
All this sucks because it points to a world in which OpenAI is definitely less product-focused going forward and much more about drilling down on the business. That's undoubtedly the right move for the company given everything going on, but that doesn't make it the right move for me, the end user.
Goodnight, not-so-sweet viral prince. We hardly knew ye. I'm so Sora for our loss.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Also, why do weird things keep happening around promised OpenAI investments?... ↩
2026-03-25 19:43:29
Look, let's try to be nice to Apple. They're a little slow on this whole "AI" thing. After spending years and years downplaying the role of the technology, most notably with several senior executives reported to have directly disparaged the whole "chatbot" movement as a passing fad, they're now playing catch up. Including, naturally, racing to build their own chatbot.
But those initial reports about how they would implement their upgrades to Siri indicated that there wouldn't be a stand-alone app for the service – again, that was undoubtedly too chatbot-like for Apple's taste – and instead it would be a system-wide integration, just like the current Siri. You know, Apple's "AI" system which has completely and utterly sucked for the past 15 years running.
Granted, Apple would be upgrading the technology powering Siri – going so far as to outsource the work largely to Google, their Big Tech frenemy which was also caught flat-footed in the early days of the current Age of AI. But their miss wasn't due to a lack of belief, but rather a corporate timidity and culture that they had to overcome. Which they seemingly now have. As such, they're right there in the thick of the AI race, miles – no, lightyears – ahead of Apple. So it was obviously wise of Apple to partner with one of the leaders in AI to give Siri a brain transplant. It was there own way to jump back into the race, at least from a product-perspective.
Just one little problem. The product itself.
Again, all the reports (and previous work) on Siri indicated it would remain this nebulous AI thing running in the background. But that's just not the way people are now trained – from the get go – to interact with AI. Much to the chagrin of Craig Federighi (now leading up Apple's AI efforts) and John Giannandrea (now since "retired" from Apple's AI efforts), the chatbot won.
But as Meta, Google, and others have learned, it's not enough to have a chatbot that resides amorphously everywhere. Users needs a centralized place to go to use AI. At least for now, in these early days. Which is to say, there needs to be an app.
You might have thought the company most synonymous with apps would have understood this from the get-go. But again, all indications were that they did not. They were clearly going to have to learn the hard way, a likely mistake that I noted over and over and over again. But I'll highlight what I wrote all the way back in June 2024, right after Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence:
The one thing I still wonder/think about post-WWDC is if Apple does still have a go-forward plan on the chance that the chatbot paradigm isn't just a fad. I'm using "chatbot" as a catch-all here – I also believe chatbots are a feature – but it's more about the overall interaction paradigm. That is, what if ChatGPT has taught a new generation that the best way to interact with AI is to ask "it" something (be it via text, voice, images, etc) and get something back – not just from your content, but from beyond. Apple doesn't currently have a way to do that – aside from the ChatGPT fallback. What if Apple needs to answer this call still?
Logically, this would be through Siri – assuming they can get Siri up to snuff, which is still a big assumption. And maybe we get to the point where "she" merges with Spotlight? And then Apple could just swap-out ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/etc with their own LLM output. But the brilliance of their model here is that they can do this slowly and subtly over time. This doesn't have to be a rip-out Google Maps and shove a wonky Apple Maps in users' faces situation. The query routing system Apple has built should allow them to just slot in their own results as they're confident in them.
Or perhaps they do decide that this is just like the web search paradigm. In that case, they strike a deal with one of these players to be the default chatbot in exchange for a handsome fee and/or revenue split.
Well, it's happening. (Right down to striking those deals.) And it didn't even require getting it wrong (again) in iOS 27 before inevitably doing it correctly in iOS 28! Here's Mark Gurman reporting for Bloomberg:
As part of the shift toward this approach, Apple is testing a dedicated Siri app for the iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year. It rivals outside AI tools while also giving users a central place to access their past interactions.
Yeah, so just like every other AI service. Thank you.
But perhaps the most wild element of this report is that Gurman has either seen the new app or been in touch with someone who has and can describe it in great detail. (The leaks he's able to pull out of Apple remain increasingly wild to me.)
The app’s main interface will display prior conversations in either a list or a grid of rounded rectangles with text previews. Users can pin favorite chats, save older conversations, search across interactions and start new chats via a prominent plus button.
The conversation view resembles a thread in Apple’s Messages app, with chat bubbles and a text entry field. It also includes a toggle for switching in and out of voice mode and an option to upload attachments — such as documents and photos — for analysis. These features have already become standard in modern chatbot interfaces.
When starting a new conversation, Siri will offer suggested prompts based on prior usage. The interface adapts to light and dark modes, with a white background and dark text or the inverse.
Again, all of that sounds good/standard. And amazingly, he goes even more in-depth on the UI Apple is clearly at least testing:
Users will still be able to trigger Siri via the power button or voice command, but Apple is testing a redesigned interface that replaces the glowing edges effect introduced in iOS 18.
One new design in testing places Siri at the top of the screen within the Dynamic Island, the mini-interface that Apple introduced in 2022. After it’s activated, Siri will prompt the user to “Search or Ask.”
When processing a request, a pill-shaped indicator labeled “Searching” appears, alongside a glowing Siri icon. Once results are ready, the interface expands into a larger translucent panel with Apple’s Liquid Glass design. Users can pull the menu down further to begin conversing back and forth.
This points to the stuff that other AI apps/services can't do because they don't control the iPhone, Apple does. Again, Apple went about this at first all wrong because the chatbot interface won, but being able to do both will likely be pretty killer here. I "hack" this together by using the iPhone "Action Button" to invoke ChatGPT, but it just launches the app, it's not as seamless as, say, hitting a button and talking to Siri.1 Assuming Siri actually works now – thanks, Google – we could be getting the best of both worlds from Apple. And that could actually push the AI interaction paradigm forward.
Beyond the chatbot!
This points directly to Apple's potential power here. Yes, in AI. Yes, despite years of missteps and setbacks. If they can come in now with an actually working Siri – I know, I know! – in both app and system-wide form, they could actually vault right back to the top of the AI conversation.
The other players are all working on hardware to try to counter the hold Apple has with the iPhone. But they're not going to replace the iPhone – at least not anytime soon, so... Again, there's a world in which Apple, despite the endless wandering through the AI desert, spending basically nothing on CapEx while their peers spend hundreds of billions, wins. Again.
The bigger issue remains that if by outsourcing the core work to Google, Apple never is able to catch up from a pure technology stand-point and this encumbers the true "what's next" shift in hardware. But again, that's likely years away. The hope would be that Apple is simply buying themselves more time to meet that moment as well. I'm more skeptical of that longer term if AI really does change everything, which is why I don't think it's completely insane to try to buy Anthropic right now. (It's just mostly insane.)
Anyway, it all starts with getting Siri right. And that includes implementing Siri right. And that means there needs to be an app for that.
One more thing: Back to Gurman's report:
Apple is also working to replace its existing on-device search system, Spotlight, with Siri. The new unified interface helps users find local content or submit broader queries in one place.
Yes, this obviously needs to happen. Per my point two years ago, Siri and Spotlight should merge into the one search to rule them all.
I don't know about the reported "Search or Ask" functionality per above – sounds sort of like the 'Dr. Know' system from the movie actually called A.I. which confuses the user. In this case, an AI android. "Flat fact?"
1 You can sort of "hack" this together too thanks to Apple's Shortcuts app, but it's still a bit more wonky than a true system-level integration. ↩
