Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Apple’s choice of Google’s Gemini to power the next version of Siri was about as predictable as peanut butter mixed deliciously with chocolate.
Early this week, Apple and Google issued a joint statement Saying that the iPhone maker and the online search giant will team up to bring Siri into the era of agentic artificial intelligence. What exactly this means is uncertain. What we do know is that Google’s Gemini AI models will power Apple’s next generation of enterprise models. Knowing Apple, we probably won’t see Google or Gemini branding all over iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. Instead, Apple will likely give Google the ability to create a custom engine for Apple’s intelligence. But Apple will drive the car.
“If this were a romantic comedy, you might say, in retrospect, that this will always be the outcome — it makes a lot of sense,” he said. Andy Tsaiprofessor of information systems and analytics at Santa Clara University’s Levy School of Business.
Apple’s latest deal with Google comes after years of the two companies working together to ensure dominance in their respective fields. Thanks for Department of Justice antitrust prosecution against GoogleCourt documents from 2022 revealed that Google paid Apple 20 billion dollars To remain the default search engine across Apple devices. This discouraged Apple from creating a competing online search engine, and Google was able to collect valuable data from Apple users. The deal also marks the end of… Apple’s road is bumpy To create their own AI models, at least for now. and Apple’s current partnership with OpenAI for Apple Intelligence It did not produce the results that fans were hoping for Things have improved. As Google and Samsung continue to integrate AI deeply into their devices, Apple’s partnership with Google ensures it doesn’t fall behind for another year.
Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased technical content and lab reviews. Add CNET As Google’s preferred source on Chrome.
Why did Google win in the end?
Probably so OpenAI and Anthropic have aggressively petitioned Apple To be the operating partner of Apple Intelligence. Observers say previous financial partnerships and current technological innovation are why Google is likely to win.
“In terms of technology, I think Google’s technology is far superior,” said Humayun Shaikh, an early investor in DeepMind and current CEO and founder of Fetch.ai, a company that creates and/or facilitates communications between systems and AI agents. Google bought DeepMind in 2014 for $650 million. “Google, in my opinion, probably has the greatest understanding of what’s going on in how they train these models and how they put in place these guardrails,” Sheikh said.
Sheikh admitted his bias towards Google because he has been with the company for a long time. Fetch is currently working with Google to bring it over Gemini models to its Agentverse platform.
“Google has a lot more experience in mobile as well, so they know how to optimize all of that better than OpenAI, because they have their own phones and their own mobile operating system,” Sheikh said.
Should iPhone users worry about privacy?
When it comes to data, no company can extract it better than Google. It has access to the data of billions of users around the world, thanks to Google Search, Chrome, and Android. It then allows advertisers to bid to place perfectly targeted ads against that data.
However, Apple users care deeply about privacy. Launch Apple Intelligence Mode Privacy as a top concern in 2024 CNET study. Despite Apple users’ privacy concerns, Google’s long-term role as the default search engine has given it access to a lot of iPhone and iPad user data.
Consumers are likely concerned about what Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence might mean for their more sensitive information on the device.
“It is unlikely that the user’s query will be directed to a Google server, I do not think that is the case,” he said. Haiping Luprofessor and co-chair of the Department of Information Systems and Analytics at Santa Clara University’s Levy School of Business. Lu is also the co-founder and CTO of the company AIConformRisk automation platform.
What’s more likely is that Google will build a model for Apple, and the AI will run on Apple’s servers and devices, Lu said.
In essence, experts said, it doesn’t matter what AI models are used as much as how they are deployed and the server that hosts them.
Will regulators intervene? What is the long-term play?
Having the world’s second- and third-largest AI partner companies could mean further entrenchment of big tech companies, pushing out smaller players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral. This may upset regulators around the world, but at least in America, this type of deal will likely be allowed to pass.
Tsai said the Trump administration was less eager to challenge Big Tech companies than the Biden administration was. “I take it they don’t have a problem with this, whereas the previous administration probably would have had a big problem.”
Ultimately, with AI, Apple wants to fulfill the initial promise of Siri, a digital companion that can make life easier for users. This requires retooling the assistant so that it can integrate with the AI to understand what you want it to do and execute it effectively. However, getting there means taking advantage of technology provided by other agencies and companies. Apple Intelligence may, at the moment, be powered by Gemini, but that may not always be the case.
“They may have bought into a short- to medium-term solution,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group vice president and managing director of global infrastructure research at IDC, a global market information and data company. “Remember Apple Maps? Google Maps was the default service for a long time. The same goes for the search engine. It’s Google at the moment. That could change.”
Reinventing Siri for the age of AI will mean a different relationship between users and software. Apps will become less prominent, fading into the background as Apple Intelligence picks up the slack.
“Apple is cognizant of the fact that your reliance on multiple apps will decrease, and you will rely on an app where agents can actually get the job done,” Sheikh said. “That’s where the agent system came from, because each agent needs to be somewhat autonomous and have this cognitive ability to do something, to understand something.”