REDMOND, September 11 — Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot now works on Apple’s CarPlay, giving iPhone users one more way to talk to an AI assistant while they drive. The move, reported Friday by 9to5Mac, makes Copilot the sixth major third-party AI chatbot app on Apple’s in-car platform. Here’s what it means in plain terms.
CarPlay has quietly turned into a battleground for AI assistants, and Microsoft just claimed its spot. Think of it like a radio dial that used to carry a couple of stations and now carries a whole band — the same dashboard, but far more voices competing for the driver’s attention.
The roster, and the one name missing
With Copilot’s arrival, CarPlay supports six major third-party AI chatbot apps: OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, SpaceXAI’s Grok, Meta AI, Anthropic’s Claude, and now Microsoft Copilot. That leaves Google Gemini as the last major holdout. That absence is striking.
Gemini has been widely integrated across Google’s own products and Android, yet it has not joined the CarPlay roster of conversational AI apps. The 9to5Mac report does not say when or whether Google might add support.
Apple isn’t staying on the sidelines. A seventh AI option arrives Monday, September 14, when Apple’s dedicated Siri AI app comes to CarPlay alongside the official release of iOS 27, which exits beta that day. Siri AI itself will remain in beta and be rolled out in waves — a staged deployment rather than an immediate full release.
What you actually need to run it
Conversational apps for CarPlay require iOS 26.4 or later, according to the report. That’s Apple’s platform gating for third-party AI chatbots in cars. Copilot appears to require a subscription to work with CarPlay, which points to a monetization angle for Microsoft’s assistant in vehicles.
The voice-driven Copilot app mirrors chat history from the iPhone app, including text-based threads. The practical upshot is continuity — a conversation started on the phone can pick up from the dashboard, rather than starting over.
The report was written by Zac Hall, a senior editor at 9to5Mac who has covered Apple, apps, and AI since joining the site in 2013. It was published September 11 at 7:16 am PT and carried three comments at the time of publication, filed under Apps, CarPlay, Microsoft, and AI.
It sits inside a busy September news cycle for Apple platforms. 9to5Mac has published hands-on coverage of a foldable iPhone Duo, the announcement of the iPhone 18 Pro, comparisons of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro, and Apple’s disclosure of additional details about Apple Intelligence usage limits and terms in a separate September 9 report. Apple describes CarPlay as a smarter, safer way to use iPhone in the car.
The platform’s growing appeal to AI makers is easy to see: the dashboard is where drivers already spend time, and voice is the natural interface there. What to watch next is Monday. That’s when iOS 27 lands and Siri AI makes its CarPlay debut — and when the question of whether Gemini ever joins the other six gets a little louder.
