Big AI chatbot updates are landing across consumer tech and policy, from Apple’s Siri plans tied to Google Gemini to new in-chat app controls inside Anthropic’s Claude. At the same time, OpenAI’s ChatGPT briefly showed degraded availability for some users, while France advanced a push to limit social media access for younger teens.
Apple’s timeline is focused on a near-term Siri rollout that 9to5Mac said is expected to appear in iOS 26.4 beta as soon as next month, with a public demonstration planned for the second half of February. Separately, Anthropic says Claude can now run interactive workflows inside connected third-party apps, and French lawmakers have passed a bill that would ban social media for minors under 15 if it becomes law.
Apple’s Siri plans tied to Gemini
Apple and Google officially announced earlier this month that they would partner, and 9to5Mac reported that Google Gemini models will power future Apple Intelligence features using Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers. The same report said Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman expects the partnership to debut in iOS 26.4 beta as soon as next month, with Apple planning to demonstrate the features publicly in some capacity.
According to the report, the iOS 26.4 Siri upgrades are expected to make Siri more aware of what is on a user’s screen, more aware of the user, and able to take actions inside apps. 9to5Mac also reported that the Gemini-powered models on Private Cloud Compute are internally known as Apple Foundation models v10 and use a 1.2 trillion parameter model.
The same article also described additional plans attributed to Gurman for iOS 27 and macOS 27, including chatbot-style features and models referred to as Apple Foundation Models v11. It also said talks were still ongoing about iOS 27 features, including whether some capabilities might rely on Google’s infrastructure.
Claude adds in-chat app actions
Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in late 2024 as an open-source project meant to bridge AI models with external tools and data sources, according to 9to5Mac. The article said MCP has since become widely used for AI productivity workflows, with companies and developers building MCP servers to connect tools and data sources.
9to5Mac also reported that Anthropic donated MCP to the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation late last year. In its latest announcement, Anthropic said nine productivity tools and platforms are now available as interactive apps inside Claude through MCP, including Asana, Canva, Figma, and Slack.
The article described examples of what Claude users can do through these integrations, such as drafting Slack messages, updating timelines in Asana, creating presentation outlines in Canva, and producing diagrams in Figma’s FigJam environment. Anthropic also said Salesforce is “coming soon” to bring enterprise context to Claude with Agentforce 360, according to the same report.
ChatGPT outage reports ease
OpenAI may have experienced a service outage on Monday morning, according to a report citing Downdetector.com. The same report said that by 9:14 a.m. PT, about 1,000 users had reported issues on Downdetector, which collects user reports from multiple sources.
OpenAI’s status page indicated ChatGPT availability had degraded for free and logged-out users and that OpenAI was investigating the issue, which the status page said began around 8:49 a.m. PST. The report also said most users reporting problems to Downdetector indicated trouble accessing ChatGPT.
An update in the same article said that as of 9:59 a.m., OpenAI’s status page showed ChatGPT operating normally. The report did not describe a specific cause for the disruption.
France votes on under-15 social media ban
French lawmakers passed a bill that would ban social media use by under-15s, a move that Channel News Asia said President Emmanuel Macron has championed as a way to protect children from excessive screen time. Channel News Asia reported that the lower National Assembly adopted the text by a 130 to 21 vote during an overnight session running from Monday (Jan 26) to Tuesday.
The bill will now go to the Senate, France’s upper house, before becoming law, according to Channel News Asia. The outlet also reported that the legislation provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools.
Channel News Asia reported Macron called the vote a “major step” in a post on X. The outlet also reported that former prime minister Gabriel Attal said he hoped the Senate would pass the bill by mid-February and that authorities want the measures enforced from the start of the 2026 school year for new accounts.
The legislation stipulates that access to an online social networking service provided by an online platform is prohibited for minors under 15, while excluding online encyclopedias and educational platforms, according to Channel News Asia. The report added that an effective age verification system would be required and that work on such a system is underway at the European level.
