Apple’s ‘Veritas’ chatbot is reportedly an employee-only test of Siri’s AI upgrades

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman Apple is testing Siri’s upcoming revamp using an internal chatbot called Veritas. The company’s struggles as it tries to keep pace in the AI race are no secret. The next-gen Siri has been delayed multiple times and the debut of Apple Intelligence was met with a tepid response. Veritas gives Apple the ability to quickly develop, test, and collect feedback on new Siri features like “search[ing] through personal data… and perform[ing] in-app actions like editing photos.“

According to Gurman Veritas resembles other chatbot apps like ChatGPT and Gemini. Employees type requests, have back and forth conversations, and can even revisit old exchanges to dig deeper on a particular topic. But, at least for now, it doesn’t appear like there’s any plan to release it to consumers. (Which Gurman believes is a mistake.) Instead Apple plans to keep its internal chatbot just that, internal. Instead it’s looking increasingly likely that Apple is going to rely on Google’s Gemini for its AI-powered search.