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This is not "Google AI on your iPhone." Read the article.
I did. Gemini is a Google product. It’s not made by Apple. It’s not Apple Intelligence. It’s a Google LLM. It will power Siri. Siri will now be just a front end for querying a Google AI. Privately, yes. On Apple servers, yes. But none the less, Siri will become a front end for a Google engineered LLM.
 
Apple has done this before:
- Leaned on Google until Apple’s in-house maps were “ready”.
- Leaned on Weather Channel until their in-house weather data was ready.
- Leaned on Intel and Qualcomm until their in-house chips were ready.

Now leaning on Gemini until their in-house solution is ready. This is a stop gap to give Apple all the time it needs to get this right, since they got it so publicly wrong the first time, yet can’t risk not shipping an enhanced Siri in 2026.
Well said, this all can be a bit jarring especially with the negative Apple News going around these days but no 1 company is good at everything
 
Apple is now dry sucking to Google. Freakin' sellout decision and AI is overhyped. Wish Scott Forstall took over instead of dismissing him.
Yes I've always had privacy concerns about the way Google treats data given it derives a lot of revenue from targeted ads.

To me it would be counterproductive to use an iPhone, search with DuckDuckGo, have a VPN and then have Google's AI engine driving a heap of functionality.

That said I'm on an iPhone 12 mini and have ChatGPT as my AI chatbot. Frankly, IDK what my next phone will be. The thought of a new iPhone is not exciting me (nor is a new Android phone). Sigh...
 
The only possible upside for Apple to use Gemini to power Siri is that Apple could be biding their time until they get their own trillion plus parameter in-house AI stood up whereby they then do to Google what they did to Intel with the transition to their in-house Apple Silicon chips. Then, at that time, Apple Intelligence will be the default search engine for Safari and Apple can boot Google forever and keep that 20 billion dollars per year payola in their own pocket.
Apple doesn't even want to build a dedicated chatbot for AI so there is no plans to build their own AI infrastructure!
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't pay Google pay Apple billions to keep Google the default search engine on Apple devices?
Last I knew, yes. Which is why one of the first changes you should make to Safari across all of your devices it to change the default search engine.
 
In the meantime, Siri gets dumber every day. I have been using my HomePods as tools and CarPlay is key, and not the Idiot Siri cannot handle simple directives it had no problem with 6 months ago.

I thought it was just me. Siri seems to be getting DUMBER every day like Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon” except Siri never quite got to genius status.

Only thing I use it for is to answer text messages in the car. Otherwise, Siri really is useless.

On one hand, it’s probably good that Apple threw in the towel and just decided to pay Google. It’s kinda a wash since it just comes out of the $20B Google pays Apple a year. Apple clearly wasn’t getting this done in the next 6 months, let alone the next 2 years. Getting it wrong again would be an absolute PR disaster for Apple. So they farmed it out to a company that can get it done.

What does this say about Apple as a company? I mean, Apple really should have the the ability and the resources to make this happen, do it better than anyone else, and do it quickly. This tells me something is wrong at Apple. Whether it’s leadership, or corporate culture, IDK.

But not being able to get this right on their own is NOT a good sign. Good on them for realizing their limitations, though.
 
At first blush this annoyed me because they should have went with Anthropic, but Google is something I actually don’t want to deal with directly so having the tech without the company is kind of cool and gives me a third option, if they ever introduce a chatbot (which I still doubt).

At minimum, xcode AI assistance will get way, way better next year.
 
This is a good move by Apple. I'm not the biggest fan of Google, but AI is very transitional right now. They will figure out their own deal, but in the meantime will buy services to serve their customers. It's the right thing to do.
 


The smarter, more capable version of Siri that Apple is developing will be powered by Google Gemini, reports Bloomberg. Apple will pay Google approximately $1 billion per year for a 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model that was developed by Google.

Finder-Siri-Feature.jpg

For context, parameters are a measure of how a model understands and responds to queries. More parameters generally means more capable, though training and architecture are also factors. Bloomberg says that Google's model "dwarfs" the parameter level of Apple's current models.

The current cloud-based version of Apple Intelligence uses 150 billion parameters, but there are no specific metrics detailing how the other models Apple is developing measure up.

Apple will use Gemini for functions related to summarizing and multi-step task planning and execution, but Apple models will also be used for some Siri features. The AI model that Google is developing for Apple will run on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers, so Google will not have access to Apple data.

Gemini uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture, so while it has over a trillion total parameters, only a fraction of them are activated for each query. The architecture allows for a large total compute capacity without racking up significant processing costs.

Apple weighed using its own AI models for the LLM version of Siri, and also tested options from OpenAI and Anthropic, but it decided to go with Gemini after deciding Anthropic's fees were too high. Apple already has a partnership with Google for search results, with Google paying Apple around $20 billion per year to be the default search engine option on Apple devices.

Though Apple is planning to rely on Google AI for now, it plans to continue working on its own models and will transition to an in-house solution when its LLMs are capable enough. Apple is already working on a 1 trillion parameter cloud-based model that could be ready as soon as 2026. Apple is unlikely to publicize its arrangement with Google while it develops in-house models.

Apple was meant to debut an updated version of Siri in iOS 18, but deficiencies required the company to overhaul the underlying Siri architecture and significantly delay the rollout. The smarter Apple Intelligence Siri is expected to be introduced in an iOS 26.4 update that's coming in spring 2026.

Siri will be able to answer more complex queries and complete more complicated tasks in and between apps. It will be closer in function to Claude and ChatGPT, though Apple is not planning a dedicated chatbot app.

Article Link: Apple's New Siri Will Be Powered By Google Gemini
This simply means one thing: even more reason NOT to use Siri now.
 
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Should've been like this since day one. Actually, Apple should just scrap Siri entirely and not associate ANYTHING Siri related with Gemini. Only from there will people be confident in Apple's AI assistant.

The current setup is embarrassing to say the least.
 
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