Apple hopes that Apple Intelligence-based Siri will be able to control apps via voice commands, but its functionality will be limited at launch and it may not be able to control banking apps.
It has been previously reported that Apple has opened up Siri to developers so that it can better sense the environment when users make requests. This will be achieved through the increasingly important application intent system. And Bloomberg now says that letting Siri control apps via voice is the real focus of Apple's development efforts.
Siri can already open apps and trigger shortcuts via voice commands for a degree of further control. But their goal now is reportedly to enable users to do everything from edit photos to purchase items to add social media comments, all without touching the iPhone screen.
Apple is said to have been testing this feature in a series of popular third-party apps, such as Uber, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Apple is also integrating this feature into its own apps and select games.
The feature will reportedly exclude or at least limit control of banking, financial and other sensitive apps, possibly including health apps. That's because the feature must be completely and continuously reliable, and Apple won't roll it out to all apps at once.
This use of Siri is significant, the report says, and is far more important than the promised feature of asking users for their forgotten name. But this promise is a rare example of artificial intelligence being truly applied to human actions.
Opening an app via request is great in itself, but it also has accessibility features. But it can already be done, and this extension that controls all the functionality of the app is just an extension, not something entirely new.
This might lead to an impressively fast way to use the device, or perhaps improved search functionality would help too. The latest reports suggest that Siri may gain ChatGPT-like search capabilities in the first half of 2026.