Apple in talks with Google to give Siri a new Gemini brain, internal ‘bake off’ underway: Report

Apple is in early discussions with Google about using the tech giant’s Gemini AI to power the revamped version of Siri, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The iPhone maker had first announced its next big update to Siri at WWDC 2024, but it has been delayed by over a year due to engineering setbacks.

The Cupertino-based tech giant has reportedly approached Google to explore building a custom AI model that would serve as the foundation of the new Siri voice assistant next year. Google is also said to have started training a model that could run on Apple’s servers.

Prior to discussions with Google, Apple had also explored partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI to see if either Claude or ChatGPT could serve as the brain for Siri.

A decision on which AI model will be used for powering Siri is still several weeks away, and the company hasn’t totally ruled out using its internal models either.

Apple is internally holding a ‘bake-off’ to see which of the two approaches will work best. The iPhone maker is said to be developing two versions of Siri: one called Linwood, powered by its own AI models, and another called Glenwood, which runs on outside AI models.

While Apple executives were initially inclined towards Anthropic, the financial terms demanded by the AI startup led Apple to bring other companies into the mix.

Meanwhile, in the case of a Siri partnership with third-party models, Apple would likely run them via its Private Cloud Compute servers, which use Mac chips for remote AI processing. This would also mean the new version of Siri won’t run directly on devices.

These discussions are reportedly separate from other talks held by the company to integrate chatbots into Apple Intelligence. The company currently uses ChatGPT to power more complex queries in Apple Intelligence and has previously confirmed it is also exploring a similar partnership with Google.