According to Bloomberg, Apple is in talks with Google to integrate its Gemini artificial intelligence into the iPhone, a move that should help both companies compete with OpenAI and its partner (with heavy investment) Microsoft. While this may seem like an admission that the tech giant is lagging in the field of artificial intelligence, such a partnership makes sense if you consider the generative AI models as an evolution of the web search that Google already provides on all Apple devices. According to the report, Gemini could become a cloud-based generative AI engine for Siri and other iPhone apps, and Apple’s models could be woven into the upcoming iOS 18 for on-device AI tasks.
Bloomberg notes that Apple has also discussed using its models with OpenAI, and could eventually partner with another AI company, such as Anthropic. Apple may even work with multiple partners until its generative models are perfected. But the merger with Google makes the most sense, especially considering that the search giant has already allocated the tech giant millions of dollars to bring search to the Safari browser.
Apple needs some sort of generative AI model that it can deploy this year (its own Ajax model will likely take years to catch up with Gemini and OpenAI), and Google needs a quick way to deploy its AI to billions of devices.
There are regulatory issues to consider – the US Department of Justice has already sued Google over its dominance in search, including how it pays Apple and other companies to use its search engine. But with the spectre of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, which overnight turned the Bing search engine into an AI hype machine and now powers all of Microsoft’s Copilot AI solutions, the potential rewards may be worth the risk for Apple and Google.
Google still has technical issues to work out: Gemini has recently come under fire for inaccurately rendering historical imagery. But even considering the potential difficulties, a partnership will help both companies. It will also give Apple time to develop its models while OpenAI and Google deal with the problems of generative AI.
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