Apple chief Tim Cook confirmed a few days ago that the overdue AI brain transplant for Siri — one that makes it nearly as smart as rivals such as Gemini and Copilot — will arrive next year. The company is pretty late to the AI game, one where legacy assistants have already been upgraded with next-gen smarts.
Google Assistant is now Gemini. Microsoft has left Cortana behind and entered the Copilot era. Upstarts such as ChatGPT and Claude are finding their way to mainstream products, integrating with a wide variety of apps and services — even fleshing out as browsers.
Siri, well, it has remained the same. Apple gave it a half-hearted boost by pushing the stack behind ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence. Essentially, ChatGPT handles what Siri can’t, from generating fun images to fixing grammar. Apple’s in-house attempts with an AI rebirth, dubbed LLM Siri, have reportedly taken a backseat. Google, it seems, could play the knight in the shining armor for Apple.
What’s happening?
In the latest edition of his PowerOn newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple tasked Anthropic and Google with building a model that could run atop its own compute servers and serve as the backbone for Siri. Even though Anthropic’s Claude was deemed the better choice, Apple ultimately went with Google’s Gemini.
“Apple is betting heavily on the new Siri, which will lean on Google’s Gemini model and introduce features like AI-powered web search,” says the report. What does this mean? Well, that’s pretty unpredictable, to be fair. Will Gemini remove ChatGPT from its pedestal within the Apple Intelligence bundle? We’re not sure.
Will a “raw” Gemini foundation simply be integrated with the Siri codebase and make it smarter? That’s plausible. Or, will Gemini simply co-exist alongside ChatGPT, letting users pick the one they prefer? We can’t rule that out either.
“Our intention is to integrate with more people over time,” Cook told CNBC, so there’s that vague, but heavy-hitting statement. In the past, Apple executives have said that the company is open to more AI partnerships. Last year, SVP of Software division, Craig Federighi, mentioned that Apple “may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future.”
At the moment, there’s plenty of wild speculation out there regarding the future of Siri. But it seems that Apple has given up ambitions of using its own foundation AI model for the architecture-level upgrade to Siri, and will essentially use the framework that currently powers Gemini.
The wins are obvious
On the surface, putting Gemini’s architecture behind Siri sounds like a win-win situation. Gemini’s natural language capabilities are far ahead of what Siri currently has to offer. Just try the Gemini Live mode and you will realize the gulf between the two. Even on smartwatches, Gemini has fundamentally transformed the voice-based controls.
I can’t wait for Siri to become less robotic and engage in free-flowing conversations. Actually, I want it to understand voice commands that don’t sound like repetitive and hardcoded word salad, and it can execute multi-step tasks, just the way Amazon’s next-gen Alexa+ assistant is now doing.
Gemini has a proven track record of integrating deeply with software millions use on a daily basis. From Chrome browser and Gmail to Google Docs and even third-party tools like WhatsApp and Spotify, Google’s AI has been baked thoughtfully at the heart of many products. It covers the whole spectrum, and then some more. From productivity tools and vibe coding to image and video generation, Google’s AI stack is going it all.
Does that mean Apple devices will become the next sales garden for Google’s own services? Unlikely. Given Apple’s history, Apple will never admit that Gmail is better than Mail, and would actively avoid any confrontational situation, either. “You shouldn’t expect this to mean Siri will be flooded with Google services or Gemini features already found on Android devices,” Bloomberg notes.
It’s going to be a controversial choice. With Gemini boosting Siri’s capabilities at the foundation level, the AI-driven experiences within Apple’s own suite of apps and services will get a big lift. Doing so would even make the Apple products stand out in the face of Google’s alternatives, assuming it plays its cards right.
Take, for example, scam detection and protection. Google is now using on-device Gemini Nano processing to sniff scams midway through a call or texting session. The company says these advancements have already made Android devices safer than iPhones. That’s nothing short of a historical reversal.
Google likely won’t share the whole secret sauce behind this progress with Apple, but Apple can still leverage Gemini to improve the experience within its own apps in other ways. The company already has the foundations ready, and all it needs is a capable AI intermediary to handle the job.
That magic pill is App Intents, a system that lets users navigate through the entire UI of their iPhone with voice commands. “With nothing but your voice, you’ll be able to tell Siri to find a specific photo, edit it and send it off. Or comment on an Instagram post. Or scroll a shopping app and add something to your cart. Or log in to a service without touching the screen,” reports Bloomberg.
Google has already given us a taste of such a Gemini-powered experience. Gemini’s integration within Google products can already handle a wide range of cross-app commands, while Project Mariner offers an entirely agentic experience where Gemini can surf the web and take actions on your behalf.
Bloomberg recently reported that Apple wants to turn wearables such as the Apple Watch and AirPods into AI-powered devices. The new Workout Buddy feature on Apple Watches is a sign of things to come. Once again, Google has shown that it can do one better. The company has already deployed AI on wearables for a wide range of practical tasks, from personalized coaching to bi-directional translation.
In a nutshell, with Gemini, Apple has a tried and tested formula to execute AI across its entire hardware and software stack under the Siri banner. Apple already has multi-billion-dollar deals with Google in place, so deepening ties likely won’t raise as many antitrust eyes as partnering with another major AI lab.
It’s not a good spectacle
On this surface, picking Gemini sounds like the most natural fit. But Apple will also have to make a few compromises. First, it would diminish the level of top-to-bottom control that Apple usually exerts over its software portfolio. Additionally, putting Gemini in the driving seat means Apple will depend on the progress Google makes with its own Gemini models.
At the moment, what works in Apple’s favor is that Gemini is one of the most powerful AI models out there. That means Apple won’t run the risk of looking like a laggard by picking it as the brains behind Siri. But going with Google also comes with its own set of drawbacks, even though Apple has made it clear that it will run all processes strictly atop its own private compute servers, ensuring that all user data is processed securely.
Google’s reputation with privacy and security, which has attracted multiple investigations and fines over the years, will make users double-think about the whole Gemini-underneath-Siri situation. But more than anything, the specter of piggybacking atop Gemini to finally rescue Siri will weigh atop Apple’s reputation as an innovator.
The partnership with OpenAI, which let users shift their queries to ChatGPT if Siri couldn’t handle them, was already an indirect admission that Apple’s AI efforts were far behind the competition. Putting Gemini at the heart would be another dent in the prestige. Putting Gemini in an even deeper steering role for Gemini would further diminish the appeal.
After all, if Gemini is already offering the same experience — and with deeper integration across mobile and web platforms — on Android phones, why would you need an iPhone or Mac to experience Siri with the same set of capabilities? In hindsight, Google will almost certainly prefer to offer a more advanced flavor of Gemini atop its own Pixel phones and software tools than what a Gemini skeleton behind Siri can accomplish on Apple’s hardware and services.
Another drawback of handing over the foundational AI reins of Siri to Gemini would mean we would never get to see what Apple’s own AI efforts would have looked like. The company is already facing the exodus of top AI talent, and it certainly won’t be a morale booster if Apple simply leases the AI model of a rival to power something as inherent to the brand’s identity as Siri.
After all, Apple kicked off the AI assistant revolution with Siri. It would be a bitter pill to swallow for fans to see it piggybacking atop a tech that is already available across Google’s ecosystem, and integrated within a whole universe of third-party software products, as well.
