Google's ongoing legal woes continued this week as the search monopoly trial that might break up Google entered its latest round.
As part of the trial, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the company is working to strike a deal with Apple that would bring its Gemini AI assistant to iPhones. He said that he expected to have a deal by mid-year with a potential launch date before the end of 2025.
Pichai's reveal came in response to questions posed by Department of Justice lawyer Veronica Onyema. It's a line of questioning dating back to last year's trials where it was discovered that Google paid Apple billions to get make Google Search the default in the iPhone Safari browser.
"He was trying to understand our plans for how we’re evolving AI technologies, our roadmap, and as part of that, we talked about the Gemini app distribution as well,” Pichai said describing talks he had with Apple CEO Tim Cook about developing AI.
According to Pichai, Cook told him that third-party AI models would be integrated with Apple Intelligence this year. That's not an entirely surprising line considering the recent overhaul of the Siri and AI teams at Apple.
While Apple was initially reluctant to bring in third-party AI models, preferring to build its own, reportedly Craigh Federighi, who is now in charge of Siri development, has been open to third-party models to get Siri where Apple wants it to be.
“We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that’s great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding,” Federighi said during WWDC 2024. “And so we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean, nothing to announce right now, but that’s our direction.”
This isn't the first time we've heard of Gemini making it's way to iPhones though. In March of last year, before Apple even announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, there were rumors that Apple might bring Gemini to the iPhone. At the time, it was reported that Gemini would run in parallel with Apple's AI models.
While a deal may not be official between the companies, the work to bring Gemini to iPhones may already be in process. In February, a code diver discovered a line in beta software that suggests iPhone users could have a choice between using Google or OpenAI.
Outlook
Presumably, this would mean that you could allow Siri to call on Gemini or ChatGPT to answer more complex questions. Currently, Siri will ask for permission to use ChatGPT to answer complex questions, analyze photos or generate images based on prompts.
For now, Gemini is available in a separate app which recently was enhanced with lock screen widgets for both iPhones and iPads.
With Apple internally struggling with AI, but needing to back up big promises made last year, a Gemini integration might get Apple Intelligence at least up to par.
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