Siri's About to Get Scary Good (And Amazon Should Be Sweating)

Okay, we need to talk about what Apple's doing with Siri, because it's way bigger than just making their voice assistant less embarrassing at dinner parties. They're building something called "World Knowledge Answers" (corporate naming committees strike again), and it's basically going to turn Siri from that friend who can barely remember your birthday into the friend who knows everything about everything you've ever bought online.

And before you think "oh great, another AI will change everything article" - hear me out. This one's different. Apple's not just building another ChatGPT clone. They're building something that could completely bypass Amazon, Google Shopping, and basically every e-commerce platform we've spent years optimizing for.

Spring 2026. Mark your calendars. That's when this thing drops, and honestly? I'm both fascinated and mildly terrified.

The "Oh Shit" Moment for E-commerce

Here's what kept me up at 3 AM last night (besides my usual spiral about whether I responded to that important email): Apple's new Siri won't just search the web. It'll search YOUR ENTIRE DIGITAL LIFE.

Your photos, your emails, your files, that receipt from three years ago when you bought those running shoes you wore twice. All of it. On your device. Without sending it to the cloud. (Privacy theater or actual privacy? We'll see.)

Picture this: You ask Siri "find me shoes like the ones I bought last year but cheaper." Old Siri would've had a stroke. New Siri? It'll scan your email receipts, check your photos for what you actually wore, figure out the exact model, and then - here's the kicker - potentially show you options without you ever visiting Amazon.

The Google Partnership That Makes No Sense (Until It Does)

This is where things get genuinely weird. Apple's working WITH Google on this. The same Apple that makes $20 billion a year from Google being the default search engine on Safari. They're literally building their Google-killer with Google's help.

It's like watching McDonald's help Burger King design a better burger. Except the stakes are billions of dollars and the future of how we shop online.

The behind-the-scenes drama is even better: Anthropic (the Claude people) apparently wanted $1.5 BILLION annually to power Siri's AI. Apple said "lol no" and went to Google instead, who's presumably giving them a better deal because... honestly, I have no idea. Maybe Google figures if they can't beat the AI revolution, they might as well get paid to enable it?

The Talent Exodus Nobody's Talking About

Here's some tea that actually matters: Apple's AI team is hemorrhaging talent faster than a startup after the funding dries up. Ruoming Pang, who literally created Apple's Foundation Models team, just bounced to Meta for a $200 MILLION package.

Two. Hundred. Million. Dollars.

And he took ten team members with him. That's not a resignation, that's a heist.

This tells us two things: First, the tech giants are throwing absolutely insane money at AI talent (making my salary feel like couch change, thanks for that). Second, Apple might be planning something huge, but they're also struggling to keep the people who can actually build it.

The Three Types of Sellers Who Should Be Panicking (Or Partying)

Based on what I'm seeing, here's who wins and loses:

The Winners:

• Brands with actual brand recognition (shocking, I know, brands matter)

• Anyone who's been building email lists like it's 2010

• Sellers with stupidly detailed product data that AI can actually parse

The Losers:

• Amazon aggregators who've been playing the keyword game

• Anyone whose entire strategy is "rank for best [product] 2024"

• Dropshippers (but let's be honest, when are they not losing?)

The "It's Complicated":

• Small sellers who've built genuine expertise in their niche (AI might actually help you if it can understand your value)

• Anyone selling visual products (fashion, home decor, that weird lamp that looks like a banana)

What This Actually Means for Your Store

Look, I'm not saying you need to panic and rebuild everything. Here's what I'm doing with my own stuff (yes, I still run some random e-commerce experiments, don't ask):

First, I'm making my product data pristine. Not just good - pristine. Every specification, every use case, every "this product is perfect for people who..." - all of it needs to be structured in a way that AI can understand. Think less "keyword stuffing" and more "explaining to a very smart but literal alien what your product does."

Second, I'm building brand recognition outside of marketplaces. If people don't know to ask for you by name, you're going to get buried under whatever Siri decides to recommend. Time to actually use that TikTok account you created and abandoned.

Third, I'm preparing for multimodal everything. People are going to take photos of things and say "find me this but cheaper" or "this but in blue" or "this but not from that company that had the scandal." Your products need to be discoverable through images, descriptions, and comparisons.

The Privacy Angle That Actually Matters

Apple's whole pitch is that this all happens on your device. Your data stays yours. Which sounds great until you realize it means Apple controls the entire shopping experience from question to purchase, and you can't even see the analytics.

It's the ultimate walled garden. Not just around the app store, but around the entire concept of shopping. And unlike Amazon, where at least you can see your metrics and sort of understand the algorithm, this will be a complete black box.

We're basically trusting Apple to fairly recommend products when they have zero obligation to do so and every incentive to favor whoever plays nicely with their ecosystem. What could possibly go wrong? (Everything. Everything could go wrong.)

The Bottom Line

Apple's Siri upgrade isn't just another AI assistant. It's potentially the most significant shift in e-commerce discovery since Google started showing shopping results. The difference is, this time we might not even know it's happening until our traffic mysteriously drops off a cliff.

The timeline gives us about 18 months to prepare. That's either plenty of time or nowhere near enough, depending on how seriously you take this threat/opportunity.

Me? I'm treating it like Y2K for e-commerce. Probably nothing will explode, but I'd rather be the person who over-prepared than the one asking "wait, why did my sales just drop 70%?"

Also, can we talk about how Spring 2026 is somehow both very soon and very far away? Like, I can barely plan what I'm having for dinner tonight, but apparently, I need to restructure my entire business strategy for something happening in 18 months. Cool. Cool cool cool.

P.S. - If you think I'm overreacting, remember that people said the same thing about mobile commerce in 2007. "Nobody's going to shop on their phones," they said. "The screen is too small," they said. Those people are now optimizing for TikTok Shop. Just saying.

• TikTok adds voice notes and richer media sharing in DMs

• My 2027 AI Predictions.

• The Browser Company to be acquired by Atlassian for $610M

  

• Apple tests Asa in SEED so retail staff can quiz an AI on products, speeding training ahead of iPhone 17 and turning AI into the store coach.

• Trump ended the $800 de minimis exemption early, shaking global ecommerce supply chains, lifting costs for small sellers, and likely pushing U.S. prices higher.

• Midjourney launches their first style explorer. 

  

• A single LinkedIn post beat 10K word SEO blogs on Google

• Reference past chats is now available in Claude!

• UPenn researchers used persuasion tactics to push GPT 4o Mini past guardrails, from insults to chemical synthesis answers, exposing how easily safety can be gamed.

• Build custom GPT input flows that ask staged questions with clear options to capture nuance and turn fluffy prompts into sharp, on brief outputs anyone can reuse.

• Google Photos adds Veo 3 in the new Create tab so users can animate stills into higher quality clips and remix images into quick AI videos.

• NotebookLM lets you pick AI podcast formats like Debate, Critique, Deep Dive or Brief plus new voices, giving research overviews faster tone control and length options.

• When do multiple AI platform choose your brand and what patterns trigger this visibility across ChatGPT and Google’s AI platform.

🫟 Nex - New tools for digital media creation and storytelling.

💲 AutoExpert: A panel of experts that helps you make better decisions.

📧 Blocks - An AI-powered email builder that will help you make stunning emails in minutes!

🙋🏻‍♀️ Kraftful Surveys GPT- Create product surveys for insightful customer feedback

⚙️ Frase AI: Research, write, and optimize high-quality SEO content quickly and painlessly using AI.

😍It was great, all I needed

🙂Good, not great

🙄It sucked