Apple in Talks With Google to Power Next-Gen Siri With Gemini AI

[jbmelby]

Maybe it's just me but without google mail, maps, youtube, chrome, photos, drive, etc. my iPhone would feel a lot less capable if I had to lean on Apple's counterparts.

Not I. I don’t use any of those, and my iPhone seems to be pretty capable. YMMV

 

[Marty80]

How about they get over it and go in talks with nvidia.

 

[HazeAndHahmahneez]

Noooooo! Please don’t let this happen…no google anything underneath anything Apple…

Looks like Apple just isn't going to bother developing their own LLM.

Too much on their plate I would think…ya gotta wonder sometimes if they’re not stretching themselves too thin. New phones, watches and laptops EVERY year. It’s sort of silly honestly. They should do new watch one yr then next new phone etc.

iPhone 18: "BUILT for Google Intelligence"

Ugh…that sounds so creepy ::shudders::

They did though, and it's in iOS 26. It just isn't integrated into Siri yet. But you can create a shortcut to tap directly into their language model and ask questions.

Apple Intelligence

Yeah so I never got into shortcuts…can you break it down?? hope that’s not asking too much of you! Haha TIA

Aspects of the Swift API were demo'd and examples given at multiple talks at WWDC earlier this year.
Apple did something very stupid last year with the announcement of Apple Intelligence before it was ready and before all this infrastructure was in place. That tells us that Apple Marketing were stupid in this case, and should have followed their normal rule of **** until you're ready to ship. But Apple Marketing is not Apple Engineering, and Apple Engineering have a plan in place grander than anything you can imagine.

Fascinating post….if possible, could you go into more detail about Apple engineering having a, “plan in place grander than anything you can imagine”?…

Also, for all those saying they wouldn't trust a Google LLM, why? If it is running on Apple's private platform and doesn't send any data to Google, why does it matter what LLM it is running?

Fascinating post, you seem very learned on this subject…



As for your last paragraph…IF Google didn’t get any user info GUARANTEED…hmm, idk I would still say don’t use anything they’ve devised…just can’t trust em…they’re just too shrewd…like the guarantee may be good for a certain point in time until they find a loophole somewhere



: (

IMO this alone should see Cook and several others kick out, it is ALL on them. Also should make some think why bother with Apple when you can go direct to Google for far less cost....

First they utterly failed wasting billions and endless months on a car project that went no where, and as such they chose to all completely ignore THE hottest biggest and most tech important market on the planet...

You don’t know that the unreleased car project was a strict failure…maybe they gleaned very important info that they couldn’t have obtained otherwise?…some feature for accessibility that winds up saving lives…I’m not trying to be an apple Stan or absolute apologist here (I would also advocate for a Linux based phone if made available and sought user privacy etc)…but I simply cannot sit idle while you say oh fire cook etc. all due respect. Peace.

The vast majority of people buying iPhones dont care about AI. Apple is printing money from hardware. They are printing money from their services. AI is not driving, nor is it hurting Apple's main businesses. The only people who are focused on AI are us nerds here on the forums.

This take sounds about right…when it boils down to it….a lot of these convenient AI uses are IML simply only like two or three more button presses/swipes away from just doing it yourself lol

Maybe it's just me but without google mail, maps, youtube, chrome, photos, drive, etc. my iPhone would feel a lot less capable if I had to lean on Apple's counterparts.

Well that’s just you. I’d say at least half of the users here on this site try to limit Google use as much as possible. So yeah…it’s not called a walled in garden for no reason…sure it’s a lot less “fun” (meaning can’t have as many apps if you’re trying to limit exposer) but it is more private/safe…

I'm ahead of Apple. Already made the switch! Gemini is very good and I'm finally out of the suffocating Apple ecosystem. If they want to trap me, they had better stay up with technology. I know... haters bring on the laugh emojis and down thumbs. But I was with Apple since iPhone 1. Apple just ain't where it's at anymore. Times are changing.

No. The more things change the more they stay the same…In this case, Google will keep going after your data… it just takes more the easier you make it…using a droid device??..:fugghedaboutit…

I wouldn’t be shocked if Apple merges with google in the next ten years, with google as the senior partner in this.

Apple for the hardware & google for the cloud, software - and AI.

Oh hell to the no!

If this indeed happened, some company (very hopefully) would be up for the task of keeping user data safe from companies like Google…and therefore would create a private ecosystem..,

I don’t care where the servers are, I don’t want Google’s AI on my iPhone

Preach preach preach. Yes yes yes.

Gemini would be an interesting choice. In some testing I asked the same questions to Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. I then discussed with each LLM the differences in their replies. Claude gave a clear overview of major themes before asking if I wanted to drill down on individual topics. Meanwhile ChatGPT and Gemini both got straight into the weeds with a lot of detail up front but no broad overviews. When asked about this Gemini explained that Claude was very well developed to explain things at a broad conceptual level while it was trained on massive amounts of data to give as much detail as possible. So, it maybe depends on what Apple think its customers want - high-level overviews or lots of detail.

Privacy…keeping away from companies like Google…this is most paramount…after that. Between the two options you pose: I’d say details, of course, the most (factual) insight possible.

I just want to see options. Same with storage - I’d love to ditch iCloud, but you’re forced into it.

How are you forced into it?? You could always use google photos or whatever it’s called, no?…

Search isn’t their business.



Makes me wonder though … does it even matter which AI I got this code from?

So, in the end, does it really matter which AI wrote that code? It certainly doesn’t for me, because it’s irrelevant. The part that matters is that I got the code that I wanted. My customer doesn’t care. Just like they don’t care if I use(d) Stack Overflow for other things.

So, let’s say I’m in Xcode doing some Swift UI stuff. And some AI in Xcode helps me to achieve that. Does it matter if the code was generated by Google, Claude or Chatgpt? No, it doesn’t.

Not to be an asshat or anything, but you say apple’s not in the search business…they kind of are…aside from charging google massive bucks to be the default search on safari, wasn’t it posted here on macrumors that apple IS indeed working on a search engine?..

Also you ask does it matter? Why, yes it does, if you care about privacy and doing your best to keep companies like google at bay, then yes what AI you use most certainly matters…

And don’t assume, “my customer doesn’t care”…maybe they do? Maybe privacy is a concern and if they had a say, they’d most certainly choose chatgpt or Siri over Gemini for this very reason…

 

[BigQJohnson]

Apple: “iPhone means privacy”

Also Apple: “let’s team up with the biggest spyware company this world has ever seen”

The MAIN reason I am in the Apple ecosystem is because I refuse to do anything with google. I don’t even have a google account. In many objective ways modern android and modern Samsung phones are leaps ahead of apple, yet I refuse to touch it.

 

[arc of the universe]

You make some good points but you are overselling things that lots of models can do. I'd add that the reason Apple is considering google is because google is also heavily invested in on device models so they understand what Apple needs, and are in a more advanced state than anything Apple has been able to produce.

Like for instance google released Gemma 3n which is a preview of where gemini nano is going. It is a 5 - 8B parameter model that effectively runs as a 2 - 4B parameter model.

Gemma 3n is
1. multimodal, can take in text, images and audio
2. multilingual, handling over 140 languages
3. has video understanding
4. is agentic and can use tool calls to operate your phone and apps (the uber eats thing you are talking about)

Not true. Literally everyone with a platform is working on this that's what MCP and tool calling is. Its an "API" that agentic models can use to call certain functions that require external service.

gemma 3n seems to me to be precisely what apple is most recently stating as what it is now going for.

 

[Dirk Pieters]

Not to be an asshat or anything, but you say apple’s not in the search business…they kind of are…aside from charging google massive bucks to be the default search on safari, wasn’t it posted here on macrumors that apple IS indeed working on a search engine?..

Also you ask does it matter? Why, yes it does, if you care about privacy and doing your best to keep companies like google at bay, then yes what AI you use most certainly matters…

And don’t assume, “my customer doesn’t care”…maybe they do? Maybe privacy is a concern and if they had a say, they’d most certainly choose chatgpt or Siri over Gemini for this very reason…

Well, yes, a device needs search capabilities. That doesn’t mean you have to write your own search. 99.9% confident that Apple is not working on their own search engine.

Reading between the lines, I probably hate Google as much as you do. But I don’t think that integrating Google services in your own os automatically equals giving up privacy. In fact, I’m confident that a deal between Google and Apple will have privacy at the front.

Some of the articles mentioned that Google would train an LLM that - once trained - would run from Apple’s servers. If that is the case then there is no privacy issue because Google won’t be involved in the process of us asking Siri to do stuff.

 

[MacATDBB]

Privacy…keeping away from companies like Google…this is most paramount…after that. Between the two options you pose: I’d say details, of course, the most (factual) insight possible.

To give an example of one of the questions I asked.

The question was "Can you summarize global regulations as they relate to genome modifications in crops".

Gemini and CHatGPT then provided comprehensive lists of which forms of modification (eg CRISPR, saturation mutagenesis, etc etc) were covered by which rules in the EU, the US and other countries. But I deduct points from chatGPT because it failed to include all forms of modification.

Claude replied by describing the different mechanisms of crop modifications and separately the different kinds of rules applied by different countries. But then the LLM wrote something quite insightful, it said "The main difference to consider between EU regulations and US regulations is that the EU tend to legislate the process while the US tends to legislate the outcome". It then asked in which direction I wanted to drill down for more detail.

So for me here Claude was the winner as that short insightful sentence was the perfect way to introduce the topic, and instead of spamming the reader with pages and pages of regulations, it asked which way the user wanted to go in order to drill down further.

 

[AussieStu]

I tried both Gemini and Copilot and so far Copilot is better for questions and ansewers.
Gemini was better in Logo Creation as example over Copilot.
So as for Siri being based on Gemini.. Hmmm im not sure if thats the right choice beased on my findings.

 

[bluecoast]

Apple: “iPhone means privacy”

Also Apple: “let’s team up with the biggest spyware company this world has ever seen”

The MAIN reason I am in the Apple ecosystem is because I refuse to do anything with google. I don’t even have a google account. In many objective ways modern android and modern Samsung phones are leaps ahead of apple, yet I refuse to touch it.

The problem is that apple’s yearly deal with having google as the default search engine, flies in the face of their privacy concerns.

 

[xaanaax]

Please, anything but not Gemini… why not DeepSeek or grok or Claude? At least use something decent or let us have a choice…

 

[martint235]

Please, anything but not Gemini… why not DeepSeek or grok or Claude? At least use something decent or let us have a choice…

I like Gemini, works for me. Deepseek is actually quite good as long as you recognise its quirk.Grok is just so far beyond an embarrassment to the AI field.

 

[UltimaKilo]

I’ve been doing some research recently and what some may find surprising. LLM’s require some device to run on! Every LLM made by every company that’s distributing them requires some device, NOT made by those companies, in order to be available to their customers! So, folks will buy some device they prefer, either from Google or their partners or from Apple, to use those LLM’s.

Meaning, even with no LLM strategy, they will still sell 100 million plus iPhones in the next year. And, very likely, 100 million plus iPhones in the year after that. That’s a small number compared to how many Android devices will sell, but not sure if I’d define that as ‘dim’.

Long term, I disagree. Apple is appealing because of its simplicity and design, much of which comes from a closed ecosystem. That’s why Apple has AppleTV, Apple Music, etc. Sure, you can use Spotify on your Mac, but Apple Music is so much better integrated with your Mac, HomePod, iPhone, etc.

 

[mansplains]

But that was unintentional. While Grok is purposely being manipulated to push an agenda. You must surely understand there is a massive distinction.

You must surely understand such a bold claim necessitates proof? From what I’ve read and xAI’s statement, this behavior was unintentional, not a purposeful manipulation. I’ll treat hallucinations as hallucinations regardless of the provider or content.

 

[BigMcGuire]

You must surely understand such a bold claim necessitates proof? From what I’ve read and xAI’s statement, this behavior was unintentional, not a purposeful manipulation. I’ll treat hallucinations as hallucinations regardless of the provider or content.

I have been very impressed with Grok. So have other devs I know. To each their own. .

I strongly support choice. Apple really needs to make it so any of the LLM’s will work.

 

[mansplains]

I have been very impressed with Grok. So have other devs I know. To each their own. .

I’ve only used it indirectly through Raycast a few times, and it worked well enough for the simple prompts I had. I’ll have to try messing with some basic dev content sometime.

 

[martint235]

You must surely understand such a bold claim necessitates proof? From what I’ve read and xAI’s statement, this behavior was unintentional, not a purposeful manipulation. I’ll treat hallucinations as hallucinations regardless of the provider or content.

xAI were very unlikely to come out and say “yes it is operating to design” were they?

 

[Shanghaichica]

So I guess they have completely given up on improving Siri in house. Whilst I did want them to be more innovative in this area at least this would put us out of our misery and given a fully functional Siri finally.

 

[arch1t3cton]

Does Tim Cook really hate Elon so much that’s he’d rather partner with the tech devil than temporarily lean on Grok until Apple Intelligence can stand on its own? 🤔

Probably...

Grok and Midjourney are my two favorite Ais.

 

[mansplains]

xAI were very unlikely to come out and say “yes it is operating to design” were they?

If they have the intent OP mischaracterizes I could see it going either way

 

[hagar]

You must surely understand such a bold claim necessitates proof? From what I’ve read and xAI’s statement, this behavior was unintentional, not a purposeful manipulation. I’ll treat hallucinations as hallucinations regardless of the provider or content.

You surely agree that the owner of an AI bot doing a Nazi salute on stage and the AI bot calling itself MechaHitler is not a coincidence. Musk has stated numerous times he finds other AI models to be too woke. Yet, the answers produced by Grok reveal systemic ideological programming.

So I stand by my position that Apple should stay far away.

 

[Dancin-Ted-Danson]

But that was unintentional. While Grok is purposely being manipulated to push an agenda. You must surely understand there is a massive distinction.

I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68412620

Using your own logic, there is no way this is coincidental

 

[Sammael]

Perfect, Skynet (Beta) and HAL-9000 are in cahoots, what could go wrong?



On the plus side, they did promise to kill me last.

 

[acader]

If you can't beat them, join them.

 

[hagar]

I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68412620

Using your own logic, there is no way this is coincidental

Not at all: Google tries to create a model that’s inclusive and does not offend anyone. And fail. While Grok is deliberately referencing Musk’s views. Again: big difference.

 

[nmt1900]

I would also add that a lot of the software that launched under Jobs was developed elsewhere and bought by Apple. Mac OS X/macOS itself is based on NeXTSTEP (and the Darwin foundation underlies iOS and all other derivatives), Safari was based on KHMTL, iTunes was based on Sound Jam MP, iDVD/DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut, Logic, and Siri were all developed by third parties. Countless other features that Apple's implemented over the years used open standards for ease of development. Apple back then knew they didn't need to do every damn thing from scratch.

NeXTSTEP case might be a bit unusual compared to others - while Apple did bought NeXT, it was actually Steve Jobs' company. Apple "bought back" Steve Jobs, his company and the foundation of all modern Apple operation systems. Avie Tevanian - one of Mach kernel developers - was Software Engineering VP at NeXT and later in Apple until 2006... being behind redesigning NeXTSTEP into what's currently known as macOS "and others".