Apple Is Turning to Its Biggest Rival for Help in Developing Artificial Intelligence.
It’s been nearly two years since Apple announced a more intelligent Siri, and yet we’re still waiting for it to appear in our hands. Aside from the ability to answer a few questions about Apple products or forward your questions to ChatGPT , the voice assistant remains essentially the same as it was before Apple Intelligence was introduced to other Apple features in iOS 18.1. Now, the iPhone maker appears to be abandoning its own development of an AI-powered Siri and turning to Google for help. I don’t think Tim Cook is happy about this, but on the other hand, it means that AI-powered Siri could finally be coming, and quite soon.
In a statement to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Apple acknowledged that it now plans to use Google Gemini to power its AI-powered Siri, rather than relying solely on its own developments. The company stated, “After a thorough evaluation, we concluded that Google’s technology provides the most suitable foundation for Apple Foundation models, and we are excited about the innovative new capabilities it will unlock for our users.” Apple previously promised that its AI-powered Siri would be able to perform tasks on your behalf, such as sending draft emails, or answer questions using context from your phone, such as finding a friend’s address using information from a conversation. However, the implementation of these features reportedly consistently broke more traditional Siri functions, such as setting alarms and reminders, during testing, forcing Apple to continually reassess its decisions. The new Gemini-based Android voice assistant initially ran into similar issues, but based on my experience with the company’s latest phones, those problems seem to have gone away, so it makes sense that Google was the first company Apple turned to for outside help.
Apple has not yet released details of the deal, but Google itself has stepped in to provide clarity for Apple users and reassure them that their data will be secure.
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In its announcement on X, the company assured Apple users that “Apple Intelligence will continue to operate on Apple devices and in the private cloud, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.” This is the same deal Apple currently has with OpenAI, allowing users to ask ChatGPT questions without the ability to train the AI on those questions or keep a log of their queries. Essentially, this means Google won’t receive any data from your AI-powered Siri. Google’s announcement also confirmed a detail from the original CNBC article, stating that the agreement with Apple will be multi-year.
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Perhaps most exciting is Google’s announcement that AI-powered Siri will be released “this year,” which echoes a statement an Apple spokesperson made to Daring Fireball last March, in which he acknowledged that developing AI-powered Siri was taking longer than expected and said the company hoped to launch it in 2026. This is a welcome relief for anyone who thought Apple had abandoned the project .
A more precise timeline is still unknown, although Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman , a reputable reporter with inside sources at Apple, previously stated that an AI-powered Siri update should be expected in the spring. Personally, I also believe the company may delay the launch until the annual WWDC conference, which typically takes place in June.
Despite the public feud between Apple and Google as the developers of iOS and Android, respectively, this isn’t the first time the two companies have collaborated, particularly in the mobile space. Previously, a lucrative deal between Google and Apple to make Google the default search engine in Safari was revealed , leading to a lengthy legal battle that ultimately allowed the companies to maintain the agreement but eliminated exclusivity contracts. The delay in the launch of AI-powered Siri may be partly due to the fact that the companies had previously considered collaborating on AI but delayed it out of caution. However, according to the court ruling, Google will also be able to enter into deals with external distributors to “pre-load and host” its GenAI products in the future, seemingly absolving both companies of liability.