Siri plays an important role in the iPhone experience, helping users get things done through voice commands—from being a major highlight at the start to later leaving users feeling that Siri hadn’t really improved much. The recent Apple Intelligence integration aims to make it better, but the secret to its upcoming plans for boosting AI capabilities may come from a powerful collaboration with Google.
Siri’s intelligence could get a boost from Google Gemini.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman saidThe upcoming Siri experience will be powered by Google Gemini, with Apple paying the search giant to build a custom model that will run on Apple’s private cloud servers. Last year, we heard that Apple was in talks with Google and Amazon about integrating their AI products into Siri. Now it appears that Apple has chosen Google’s Gemini over Amazon’s Anthropic. Gurman noted that Safari’s pre-existing Google search integration may be one of the main reasons Apple chose Gemini.
It is heartening to see the two companies finally making progress. Although Google is building a customized model of Gemini on Apple’s servers, Gurman noted that the two companies will only have a technical collaboration and are unlikely to formally pursue a partnership. This also means we are unlikely to see Siri showcasing Google services and Gemini features.
Gurman speculates that the Gemini-powered new Siri could appear in an iOS 26.4 firmware update, possibly launching in the first or second quarter of next year. Apple appears to have been working on this merger for quite some time, with a report from Mark Gurman earlier this year indicating that Apple is rebuilding Siri, which involves three key elements: a planner, a network and device search system, and a summarizer. AsForeign media 9o5Google As pointed out, the component’s search system will involve a custom Gemini model to gather information from the web. The planner and summarizer may also involve Gemini models, which will operate on Apple servers.
However, since it isn’t the core Google Gemini integration seen on other Android phones, the opportunities for data sharing are likely minimal, keeping user privacy intact. All in all, the latest Gemini integration could enhance Siri’s ability to answer complex queries and common-sense questions more effectively than it currently does for iPhone users.
Source: KOCPC Chinese