Google Gemini: Powering Siri’s Next Evolution

It’s official: Google’s Gemini will be the brains behind the more personalized Siri that’ coming this year. While we’ve been hearing rumors of this move since August, the two behemoths released a joint statement today announcing a formal partnership — and it goes far beyond just Siri.

It’s not exactly a secret at this point that Apple has been struggling to make Siri live up to its potential. It’s rather sad, considering the head start that Apple squandered. Siri beat out Amazon’s and Google’s popular voice assistants by about three years, but it seems the company never quite figured out what to do with it after its two biggest champions, Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall, were no longer with the company.

Despite a spark or two of hope in 2019, Siri remained dumber than a bag of rocks, useful only for routine voice operations like setting timers, turning on lights, and checking the weather. Ask it anything more complicated, and you were likely to be sent to a web browser, at best.

When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence during its 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), it promised that features like Writing Tools and Image Playground would soon be joined by a smarter Siri, making many believe that our long Siri nightmare might soon come to an end. What Apple showed off on stage was quite impressive, but it also turned out to be far from ready for prime time. Industry insiders disagree on whether the tag “vaporware” should apply here, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman was told by sources that “the company barely had a functional prototype.”

Despite being expected for iOS 18.4, Apple made a rare public announcement that it would be delayed into early 2026 as it needed more time to get it right. However, Apple made some foundational changes that applied to more than just the AI models — changes that seemingly included searching around for a little help.

Somewhere along the way, Apple realized that it had outplayed its hand and wasn’t going to be able to pull this off on its own — at least not in time to avoid being left in the dust by competitors. So, it started talking to the other big AI players: Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. When the dust settled, it seemed to be leaning toward Google’s Gemini, and now it’s made its final decision.

Apple also shared the news with CNBC, but it appears to be nothing more than the same statement that Google published earlier today, and both companies declined provide any further comment beyond the statement itself, which was also posted to X.

Not everyone is celebrating the union, however. Elon Musk took to X shortly after the announcement, calling the deal an “unreasonable concentration of power,” and noting that Google now effectively has its fingerprints on Android, Chrome, and the iPhone’s core intelligence. Of course, that’s likely just sour grapes; not only is Musk suing Apple over its OpenAI partnership, but from all the reports we’ve heard, Grok was never on Apple’s list — not too surprising as Musk’s creepy little chatbot doesn’t seem to be good at much more than generating nonconsensual deepfakes.

Is Apple Intelligence Sharing iOS Data With Google?

Even when the talks between Apple and Google were purely in the realm of rumor and speculation, one thing seemed clear: This isn’t going to be Gemini on your iPhone. There’s still an app for those who want that, but what Apple and Google are cooking up is more fundamental, and relies entirely on using Google’s AI models on the back-end.

The joint statement makes that clear, since it notes that “the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology” (Emphasis ours). Apple’s side of the statement also adds that Google’s AI technology — it notably avoids using the word “Gemini” — will power “Apple Foundation Models.”

In other words, this is about using Google’s large language models and underlying code to build Apple language models. That’s an important distinction that goes beyond branding, since it also means that Apple won’t be compromising on privacy. It’s taking that just as seriously as it did in 2012 when Google wanted user data in exchange for map data, which ultimately led to Apple walking away from the deal and building Apple Maps.

While the partnership is deep, the data wall remains high. Unlike the Gemini app you download from the App Store, this integration uses Google’s models as a foundation for your data — not a destination.

This is still “Apple Intelligence” as far as Apple is concerned, and it will continue to run in much the same way.