Apple's New Siri Will Be Powered By Google Gemini

[Unregistered 4U]

There was a time when Apple’s devices were powered by non-Apple CPU’s. It took a LOOONG time, but they finally got there. What Apple has that no AI company has yet, is hardware that EVERY one of those AI companies want to be available on.

When Apple comes up with their own solution, they won’t have to look around and see who’s hardware it will run on.

 

[canadianreader]

Mistakes were made that led to this AI debacle. Lack of vision and leadership that shows in poor quality software releases, ugly iPhone 17 Pro and weird rebranding. The great designs, the innovative devices that we've been accustomed to all these years are fading away. Steve once said Microsoft lacked culture and taste, the quote currently applies to Apple.

 

[Jeaz]

Feels like a really bad joke.

 

[cjsuk]

Mistakes were made that led to this AI debacle. Lack of vision and leadership that shows in poor quality software releases, ugly iPhone 17 Pro and weird rebranding. The great designs, the innovative devices that we've been accustomed to all these years are fading away. Steve once said Microsoft lacked culture and taste, the quote currently applies to Apple.

Oh man Microsoft lack several orders of magnitude of culture and taste compared to even modern Apple. There's a long way to fall yet.

As for the original thread, **** this idea in particular. I'm fed up of the tech company tangles. I want out.

 

[JonneyGee]

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.

This is the correct take. Apple has done this before, they’re using Google’s data in a way that adheres to their privacy values, and it’s only a stopgap while they perfect their first-party solution.

This is honestly excellent news. Gemini is very powerful so it’s a wise choice, and it won’t last forever. Just like Apple Maps caught up to (and in my personal opinion, surpassed) Google Maps, Apple’s LLM will catch up in time and they’ll utilize it when it’s ready.

 

[djphat2000]

If Apple announced this today how credible is it their own LLM would be ready in 2026?

I would just remind that it took Apple awhile to get their the intel modem chips to be "good". Same may hold true for Ai. Use Google as they did Qualcomm. Then when you're ready. You have two options. In house and either or OpenAI and Gemini.

 

[Pezimak]

And that is exactly what you get for TOTALY ignoring the biggest fastest growing tech market due to your utter stubbornness over fake security, now you have to use a third party with a chequered history in selling and buying user data for advertising.....

I do hope Apples shares have gone down today by several points on this news.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

again, this seems to be for cloud only, not local llm

That's what many people concerned about privacy are worried about, since it means that some of their Apple Intelligence/Siri-powered interactions with their devices will be sent to the cloud. Some people don't yet understand that this particular cloud will be Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers rather than Google's servers, and so Google isn't supposed to be able to see any of that data.

 

[Macaholic868]

I figured as much when Gurman’s article came out talking about engineers inside of Apple who were worried about how the new Siri functionality was coming along.

If Apple were searching for a partner because management already knew their internal LLM’s weren’t up to snuff and wouldn’t be, they’d probably signed confidentiality agreements with the companies whose tech they were evaluating and that knowledge would be shared on very selective, need-to-know basis until they selected a partner and had a deal in place.

Lower level, and likely even some very high level /senior level engineers would’ve been kept in the dark. Once there’s a deal in principal, even if all the details aren’t finalized, then the cat will be let out of the bag because all members of the team(s) working on this will need to know to hit their spring deadline.

That’s exactly what happened here. Even if it’s licensed Google test, if it’s running in Apple’s hardware in Apple’s data centers then they can maintain the kind of privacy protection their customers have come to appreciate them for.

This sounds like a bridge until Apple’s own LLM’s are ready, or perhaps, like with search, Google is at the forefront and both parties find the deal to be lucrative enough to keep it going unless / until a change must be made.

 

[thmsnt]

Google haters on suicide watch 😂

 

[contacos]

Start by tossing out the Siri brand. It's too damaged to be taken seriously

 

[CrysisDeu]

They should just buy Perplexity and catch up to the Assistant/AI features Android and others have had for a while now.

Perplexity doesn’t have their own model.
Building model and applications are two different things. Apple is not good at either

 

[OliOliOliOli]

I strongly dislike Google but Gemini is at least in the top 3 of all AI models.

Im using Pro version 3 pro modèles, GPT, Claude and Gemini… then maybe in english is better then French, but for my use is the worse one!
But make great pics if you use it for that…

 

[SLVDE]

Perplexity doesn’t have their own model.
Building model and applications are two different things. Apple is not good at either

I thought they did. I wasn't aware it was just a wrapper, although it looks like they're working on their own LLM. I replied to someone else who mentioned that as well.

Copy, didn't realize. If they did buy Anthropic, I'd argue a "buy once cry once" mentality, especially given how much cash Apple has on hand. They are falling behind fast and it's unfortunate how much turnover they have had, mostly thanks to all the poaching. I know Apple is never first to the party but at this point their AI footprint is almost non-existent and I'd like to hope they catch up.

 

[Compote]

Oh, so it's not Siri and it'll steal all our info. Great.

 

[jdawgnoonan]

I look forward to what Apple releases and I hope that it is a major improvement. OpenAI lost 12 billion dollars last quarter, I think not partnering with them is smart. Google LLM but running in Apple’s private cloud with Google getting no data access, I am fine with that. People should remember, Siri has sucked from day one and it has never hurt Apple a lot, therefore most people do not care.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

they've basically admitted they dont have the skills to make Siri work. and its too expensive to purchase an existing AI app/software company. so they did what Steve did with Microsoft.

 

[Radeon85]

At this point, I really don't care what powers Siri, anything would be a gigantic improvement of the current useless version. I would have preferred it if Apple used ChatGPT though.

 

[HMI]

iPhone has privacy built-in, right out of the box….but if you choose to turn it on and use it, then you may weaken the protections we put in place when we factory sealed them.

 

[Kar98]

If I wanted to use Gemini I’d buy me an Android phone.

 

[McScooby]

Copy, didn't realize. If they did buy Anthropic, I'd argue a "buy once cry once" mentality, especially given how much cash Apple has on hand. They are falling behind fast and it's unfortunate how much turnover they have had, mostly thanks to all the poaching. I know Apple is never first to the party but at this point their AI footprint is almost non-existent and I'd like to hope they catch up.

Would never happen with Anthropic, Amazon and less so, Alphabet have got there first.

 

[canadianpj]

Damn bending the knee to google after the whole google maps fiasco back then.
Timmy you think Steve Jobs is happy about this?

Very mature. I should be surprised by some of the responses here but I'm not. Anyone saying Steve wouldn't do this, even saw a Scott Forrestal have not the slighest clue what there talking about. I'm not overly jazzed about this but I'l do the amazing thing of waiting for more information. Apple has gone a long way and I cannot see a reality they do this and your data is treated any differently than it is now.

There's no bending a knee, or other comments, it's business. The time and expenditure to create a model of that size and run would put Siri back much, much longer. It's also unrealistic that here not in the background working on a replacement as well.

So let's settle down, wait for more information, actual confirmation and then we can jump up and down I guess.

 

[Jetson]

Yes, I was very disappointed that Sony turned to Google to replace their Bravia operating system. I have used Sony's operating system for decades on various TVs and thought that it was marvelous. The supplanting of that with Google TV makes me shudder.

Also as an Apple TV 4K owner, I'd much rather have a "dumb" TV than a so-called smart TV that potentially spies on you. ATV does all that I need as far as connectivity is concerned.

Therefore having Google's camel nose pushing itself into iOS or the MacOS tent is quite unwelcome. Sure it looks like it's sandboxed now, but based on Google's business model of infiltration everywhere it doesn't bode well.

 

[Kar98]

iPhone has privacy built-in, right out of the box….but if you choose to turn it on and use it, then you may weaken the protections we put in place when we factory sealed them.

And we think you’ll love it!

 

[fatTribble]

Nobody cares. Why even comment then? Provide something useful to the discussion.

Respectfully, I found his post more on point than your reply