Apple’s Hidden AI Weapon Revealed – Can Veritas Make Siri Smarter Than ChatGPT?

Tom Kydd
Sep 28
6 min read

Apple has long been synonymous with hardware innovation, privacy-first design, and a tightly curated ecosystem. Yet in the age of generative AI, the company has trailed competitors like Google, Microsoft, and Samsung, whose AI models and assistants are rapidly advancing. Recent disclosures, however, reveal Apple’s internal development of Veritas, a ChatGPT-inspired tool used to test a more powerful version of Siri. While the app remains confined to internal use, its existence signals Apple’s bid to reclaim leadership in AI-driven user experiences.

This article examines Apple’s Veritas initiative, its technical and strategic underpinnings, and what it means for the future of digital assistants. It draws on publicly reported details about Apple’s internal testing and situates them within the broader evolution of AI-powered personal assistants.

From Lagging to Leading? Apple’s AI Context

Apple’s AI strategy has historically emphasized on-device intelligence and privacy over large-scale cloud computation. This approach won praise for user trust but limited the sophistication of Siri compared to rivals. When Apple introduced its Apple Intelligence features at WWDC 2024, expectations were high: a proactive assistant capable of understanding context and taking meaningful actions. But by early 2025, delays and muted reactions underscored how far Apple still had to go.

Unlike Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which are publicly accessible and iterating rapidly, Apple has kept its large language model (LLM) experiments behind closed doors. The company’s newly revealed Veritas app marks its most significant internal leap toward ChatGPT-like functionality.

Inside Veritas: Apple’s Internal ChatGPT-Style Tool

Reports from Telegraph, TechEdt, and PYMNTS indicate that Veritas is an employee-facing app designed to accelerate Siri’s evolution. Its core capabilities mirror those of generative AI chatbots:

Multilingual Interaction: Employees can converse with the AI in multiple languages, a critical step toward global readiness.
Personal Data Search: The app can search across a user’s stored data, such as emails or messages, to retrieve and contextualize information.
Data Manipulation: Beyond retrieval, Veritas can modify user data on request—editing calendar entries, summarizing emails, or even adjusting photos.
In-App Actions: Similar to ChatGPT plug-ins or Google Assistant’s app actions, Veritas enables cross-app tasks like editing images or managing music playlists.

Although Apple has not committed to a consumer launch, the internal use of Veritas signals its dual purpose: refining Siri’s next generation and testing whether a chatbot format can add tangible value for end users.

Why Apple Built Veritas Now

Three converging pressures explain Apple’s timing:

Competitive Urgency: Google’s Gemini and Samsung’s Galaxy AI features have shifted user expectations. Without a major leap, Siri risks irrelevance in a market moving toward deeply integrated, generative AI assistants.
Delayed Roadmap: Apple announced an advanced Siri at WWDC 2024 but delayed its rollout in March 2025, acknowledging the technical challenges of large-scale personalization without compromising privacy.
Ecosystem Leverage: By first testing Veritas internally, Apple can validate new capabilities at scale within its workforce before deciding on public release—mirroring how the company tested Apple Maps and Apple Pay in controlled environments.

As James Holloway, Head of Digital Innovation at Apex Enterprises, notes,

“Apple’s approach reflects a classic ‘measure twice, cut once’ mentality. By trialing generative AI internally, it reduces risk and ensures any consumer product aligns with the company’s stringent privacy and UX standards.”

Features That Could Redefine Siri in 2026

Although Veritas itself may never reach consumers, the features it’s testing point to a radical upgrade for Siri:

Feature Area	Current Siri (2025)	Next-Gen Siri via Veritas Testing (Projected 2026)
Language Understanding	Limited contextual memory	Multilingual, context-rich, continuous dialogue
Data Access	App-specific, limited scope	Unified personal data search across apps
Action Capabilities	Simple commands	Complex, multi-step tasks within and across apps
Learning/Adaptation	Minimal personalization	Continuous feedback-driven adaptation
Privacy Model	On-device + some cloud	Hybrid with privacy-preserving AI models

If even a subset of these capabilities launches in 2026, Apple will reposition Siri from a reactive voice command tool to a proactive digital concierge.

Technical and Strategic Hurdles

Developing a ChatGPT-style assistant inside Apple’s privacy-first framework presents significant challenges:

Compute Infrastructure: Large-scale generative AI typically relies on powerful cloud GPUs. Apple must balance on-device processing for privacy with offloading tasks to the cloud for performance.
Model Training: Apple traditionally builds proprietary models. However, Bloomberg reports the company may integrate at least one external model, considering partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google.
User Experience: A chatbot interface differs fundamentally from Siri’s current voice-first model. Apple must ensure the new experience feels intuitive to hundreds of millions of users accustomed to Siri’s simplicity.
Security: Accessing personal data like emails and messages raises the stakes for encryption, consent, and data minimization.

The Partnership Question: Apple’s Shift from In-House to Collaborative AI

Apple’s culture has long prioritized in-house development. Yet reports indicate that by August 2025, the company was shifting from exploring OpenAI or Anthropic partnerships toward a collaboration with Google. Such a move would be unprecedented but logical: Google’s models already power billions of interactions daily, and Apple could leverage them under its own privacy guardrails.

For Apple, partnerships could:

Shorten time-to-market for advanced AI features.
Reduce the cost and risk of training massive models from scratch.
Allow focus on integration, UX, and privacy—areas where Apple excels.

But partnerships also carry risks, including dependency on external vendors and potential tensions over data access. How Apple navigates this will shape the next decade of its AI strategy.

What This Means for Users and the Industry

If Apple’s internal efforts succeed, the implications extend far beyond Siri:

For Consumers: A truly intelligent Siri could transform daily routines, from managing schedules to executing complex tasks hands-free.
For Developers: A more capable Siri could open new APIs for third-party apps, creating an ecosystem akin to the App Store’s early days but centered on AI actions.
For Competitors: Apple’s entry into generative AI at scale would intensify competition, pushing rivals to differentiate on openness, pricing, or niche capabilities.

Balancing Proactivity and Control

One of the critiques of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pulse feature, launched in September 2025, is that it risks creating a passive, feed-like experience rather than leveraging LLMs’ conversational strengths. Apple’s Veritas testing appears to recognize this tension. By focusing on task execution and contextual understanding rather than infinite scrolling, Apple could position Siri as a productivity tool rather than a distraction engine.

This design philosophy aligns with Apple’s long-standing brand promise: technology that enhances, not overwhelms, daily life.

Apple’s AI Journey at a Glance

Year / Event	Milestone
WWDC 2024	Apple announces “Apple Intelligence” and a more advanced Siri.
March 2025	Siri upgrade delayed due to technical challenges.
Mid-2025	Reports emerge of internal ChatGPT-style app (Veritas).
September 2025	PYMNTS, TechEdt, and Telegraph confirm Veritas testing.
2026 (Projected)	Public launch of next-gen Siri incorporating Veritas learnings.

This trajectory shows Apple moving from reactive announcements to tangible internal testing, setting the stage for a significant reveal.

Data-Driven Benefits: Potential Impact of Next-Gen Siri

Benefit Category	Projected User Impact
Time Savings	Streamlined daily tasks could save 30–60 minutes per day for power users.
Accuracy and Context	Unified personal data search reduces errors and duplicate efforts.
Learning and Adaptation	Continuous feedback enables the assistant to evolve with user habits.
Privacy Assurance	Apple’s hybrid approach could reassure users wary of cloud-only models.

Quantifying these benefits will be critical to Apple’s marketing narrative when the new Siri debuts.

Apple’s Opportunity to Redefine Voice AI

Apple’s internal Veritas tool reveals a company quietly recalibrating its AI strategy. By blending ChatGPT-like generative capabilities with Siri’s embedded presence across a billion devices, Apple could deliver the most deeply integrated AI assistant on the market. The question is not just whether Apple can match competitors’ features but whether it can do so in a way that reflects its unique values of privacy, simplicity, and ecosystem control.

For professionals and technologists tracking the evolution of proactive AI, the work being done at Apple offers a case study in strategic patience. It underscores that winning the AI race may depend as much on execution and trust as on speed.

For deeper analysis of how generative AI and proactive intelligence systems are reshaping industries, readers can explore insights from Dr. Shahid Masood, and the expert team at 1950.ai, who regularly publish research and commentary on emerging technology trends and their real-world applications.