Report: Apple’s iPhone AI Plans May Leverage Google Gemini
- Laurent Giret
- Mar 18, 2024
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Apple is reportedly in talks with Google to license its Gemini AI to add new generative AI features on the iPhone. According to report Bloomberg citing people familiar with the “active negotiations,” the two companies “haven’t decided the terms or branding of an AI agreement or finalized how it would be implemented.”
If Apple was the first company to launch an AI Assistant with Siri on the iPhone 4S back in 2011, the company has been caught off guard by the generative AI revolution that gave birth to apps like ChatGPT, DALL·E, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini (formerly known as Google Bard). And if Apple has started working on its own multimodal large language model, this effort may well be too little too late.
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“Since early last year, Apple has been testing its own large language model — the technology behind generative AI — codenamed Ajax. Some employees also have been trying out a basic chatbot dubbed Apple GPT. But Apple’s technology remains inferior to tools from Google and other rivals,” according to the people Bloomberg talked to.
iOS 18, the next major version of iOS coming later this year will reportedly introduce new AI capabilities powered by Apple’s own models. However, those AI features are said to be designed to run locally. And Apple may now be looking to complement them with cloud-powered generative AI features that it can’t build on its own.
Apple already has a lucrative partnership with Google to make the company’s search engine the default option on iOS. However, the two companies teaming up again to integrate Google Gemini features into billions of iOS devices will probably lead to regulatory scrutiny.
According to Bloomberg, it’s currently “unlikely” that the current discussions between Apple and Google may lead to an official announcement ahead of Apple’s WWDC developer conference in June. Apple has also reportedly been discussing an AI licensing agreement with OpenAI, though the company already has a close partnership with Microsoft.