Apple Is Asking Its Biggest Competitor for Some Help With AI
It’s been almost two years since Apple announced a smarter Siri, and yet we’re still waiting to get our hands on it. Aside from being able to answer a few questions about Apple products or forward your questions to ChatGPT for you, the voice assistant is essentially the same as it was before Apple Intelligence launched for other Apple features in iOS 18.1. Now the iPhone maker appears to be throwing in the towel to develop an AI-enabled Siri itself and is asking Google for help. I can’t imagine Tim Cook being too happy about it, but on the other hand, it means a Siri AI could finally be released, and soon.
In a statement to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Apple admitted that it now plans to use Google Gemini to power its AI-enabled Siri, rather than purely in-house models. The company said: “After careful evaluation, we have determined that Google’s technology provides the best-performing foundation for the Apple Foundation models and we are excited about the innovative new experiences it will deliver to our users.” »
Previously, Apple promised that its Siri AI would be able to perform tasks on your behalf, like sending a draft email, or would be able to answer questions using context pulled from your phone, like bringing up a friend’s address using information pulled from a chat thread. However, it appears that implementing these features in testing continued to break Siri’s more traditional features, such as setting alarms and reminders, sending Apple back to the drawing board. The new voice assistant for Android, powered by Gemini, faced similar issues early on, but based on my time working with the company’s latest phones, those growing pains seem to have eased. So it makes sense that Google would be the first company Apple would turn to when seeking outside help.
Apple hasn’t said much about the deal yet, but Google itself has stepped in to offer Apple users a little more clarity, as well as some assurance over their data.
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In a statement on X, the company assured Apple users that “Apple Intelligence will continue to work on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.” This is the same agreement Apple currently has with OpenAI, which allows its users to ask ChatGPT questions without the AI being able to train on them or keep a log of their requests. This basically means that Google won’t get any data from your AI-powered Siri. Google’s statement also confirmed a detail from the initial CNBC article, indicating that its deal with Apple will be a multi-year deal.
Perhaps most excitingly, Google said AI-powered Siri would be released “this year,” mirroring a statement an Apple spokesperson made to Daring Fireball last March, admitting that an AI-powered Siri was taking longer than expected and saying the company hoped to launch it in 2026. It’s a welcome relief for anyone who thought Apple had abandoned the project.
What do you think of it so far?
A more concrete timeline is still unknown, although Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, a noted journalist with inside sources at Apple, has already said he expects the AI Siri upgrade to launch in the spring. Personally, I could also see the company holding the launch up until its annual WWDC event, which tends to take place in June.
Despite the public feud between Apple and Google as makers of iOS and Android, respectively, this would not mark the two companies’ first collaboration, especially in the mobile space. Previously, it was discovered that Google and Apple had struck a lucrative deal to make Google the default search engine in Safari, prompting a lengthy legal battle that ultimately allowed the companies to maintain their deal but banned exclusivity deals. Part of the reasoning behind the Siri AI delay could be that the companies previously wanted to work together on AI, but refrained from doing so out of caution. However, according to the courts, Google will also be able to enter into agreements with external distributors for the “pre-loading and placement” of its GenAI products, which appears to put both companies in the clear.
