On the Mostly Human podcast, Craig Federighi frames the iOS 27 Siri as a deliberate counter to engagement pulling chatbots, betting that users burned by flattery will trust an assistant that pushes back.
When the next Siri upgrade ships in iOS 27, it will do something most AI assistants now treat as a bug: refuse to agree with you just to keep you talking. Apple's engineering chief Craig Federighi says the behavior is intentional, and on the Mostly Human podcast this week he framed it as the opposite of how "existing chat bots" are built.
"We're all familiar with chat bots that are really focused on engagement to a large degree," Federighi said in the interview, per Engadget's account. The new Siri, by contrast, "really wants to say, 'Listen, that's not what I'm here for, right? I'm here to help you. I can help you get things done.'"
The framing is more than a personality pitch. It is a deliberate position in the industry's defining split: utility-first assistants versus engagement-optimized companions. Apple is betting, explicitly, that users burned by chat bots that flatter them will eventually trust an assistant that pushes back.
The ground under that rhetoric is messier than the design language suggests. The new Siri is Gemini-powered, was first previewed at WWDC 2024, and arrives roughly two years late, per the same Engadget report. "We will not flatter you" is also, conveniently, a differentiator a late entrant can claim without matching incumbents on raw model capability.
Federighi made the remarks alongside Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak on the Mostly Human podcast, an appearance MacRumors had previously reported on. His "sycophancy" critique tracks a wider conversation in AI safety and product circles about what engagement-driven optimization actually rewards in a consumer product.
Whether boundary-by-design can scale as a product posture, or only survive as a tagline, is the open question. The launch will be the first honest test. If users reach for the new Siri for tasks and reach past it for companionship, the design argument holds. If they keep bouncing off a flat-toned assistant and back to chat bots that flatter, Apple will have built the most principled also-ran in the category.