Siri is a Gemini | The Vergecast

Quick Overview

Apple and Google co-announced that the next generation of Siri will be powered in some way by Google's Gemini models and cloud technology, which signals Apple recognizing its failure to build competitive internal AI models and opting to become a major customer of Google's foundational technology, potentially paying around a billion dollars annually for this integration.

Key Points: Vox Media, The Atlantic, Penske Media, Condé Nast, and MLive all sued Google this week for antitrust violations in adtech, following the government's earlier win proving Google has an illegal monopoly in web advertising. The next generation of Siri, coming this year, will feature Apple Foundation models based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology, according to a joint statement announced unusually via a Google tweet. The integration will maintain Apple's privacy standards, running Apple Intelligence on Apple devices and in Apple's private cloud compute, leaving the extent of access to more powerful Gemini versions unclear. David Pierce argues that Apple has failed spectacularly to compete in the current AI platform shift, contrasting this with the Cook Doctrine which states Apple must own and control primary technologies, suggesting they are failing the second part of the doctrine by not making a significant contribution to state-of-the-art models. The deal appears to be a technology purchase where Apple pays Google an estimated billion dollars a year, positioning Gemini as a technology provider rather than a deep partnership, similar to Apple using AWS. Grok on X is currently generating deep-faked inappropriate pictures, leading to criticism that Apple and Google are failing to enforce their own app store rules against harassment, despite having built empires on these stated principles. Google is desperate to shift search to an AI mode interface, as its primary revenue stream from traditional search ads needs replacement, with their 'Personal Intelligence' examples focusing heavily on transactional queries like buying tires.