Apple Google Partnership: An important piece of news has emerged from Silicon Valley in the technology world. Two global giants and long time rivals, Apple and Google, have now come together in a strategic partnership. Under this agreement, Google’s artificial intelligence model Gemini will provide the technical backbone for Apple’s upcoming Apple Intelligence features. The most direct and significant impact of this partnership will be seen on the iPhone’s voice assistant Siri. Apple has been working for a long time to make Siri smarter, more accurate, and more useful, and now with the addition of Google’s AI capabilities, major improvements are expected.
Why Google’s technology?
Apple has always trusted developing its own technology and software in-house. But in the generative AI race, the company appeared to be a few steps behind its competitors. According to reports and analyses, Apple has accepted that, at present, Google’s AI infrastructure and cloud technology are in a more advanced and stable position.
For this reason, the next generation of Apple’s foundation models will now be based on Google’s cloud and Gemini models. This decision shows that AI development is happening so fast that big tech companies like Apple and Google are now choosing not only competition, but also cooperation with each other as needed.
Terms of the Google and Apple AI deal
Although both companies have not officially made any statement on the financial aspects of this agreement, according to a Bloomberg report, Apple will pay Google around 1 billion dollars every year, which is approximately 8,300 crore rupees, in return for this service.
In exchange for this large amount, Google will provide Apple with its extremely powerful AI model that has 1.2 trillion parameters. In simple terms, the more parameters an AI model has, the better its ability is considered to learn, understand, and make correct decisions.
Questions around data privacy
Whenever Google and data are mentioned together, questions about privacy naturally arise. Keeping this in mind, Apple has made it clear that even though Google’s technology will be used in the backend, all rules related to users’ privacy will remain fully under Apple’s control.
According to the company:
- AI processing will mainly take place on the user’s device.
- Any request that goes to the cloud will remain secure through Apple’s ‘Private Cloud Compute’ infrastructure.
- Google will not get direct access to the user’s personal data.
What happens next to Apple’s OpenAI (ChatGPT) partnership?
Earlier, Apple had also announced a partnership with OpenAI (ChatGPT). At that time, it was said that if Siri is unable to answer a question, then with the user’s permission, help would be taken from ChatGPT. Now, after Google’s Gemini becoming the main engine, it is still not clear in what form Apple’s partnership with OpenAI will continue. However, it is being considered possible that Apple may give users the option to choose between different AI models.
What changes will you see in the new Siri?
After this partnership, Apple’s Siri will no longer remain just a simple voice command tool, but will come forward as a more intelligent and functional digital assistant. Three major changes can be seen in it:
- Personal context: Now Siri will be able to understand information like your emails, messages, and calendar and respond accordingly. For example, if you ask What time is my grandfather’s flight landing? then Siri will be able to look at the ticket details present in your email and give a direct and correct answer.
- On screen awareness: Siri will also be able to understand what is open on your screen at that time. For instance, if a friend has sent a new address in a message, you can simply say Save this to the contact list, and Siri will automatically understand which address is being referred to.
- In app actions: Until now, Siri was limited to just opening apps, but going forward it will be able to work inside apps. For example, finding a specific photo from the photo gallery, editing it, and sending it directly via email all these tasks Siri will be able to do on its own.
When will the update be available?
Apple had earlier planned to bring these features in the initial versions of iOS 18, but there has been some delay. Now it is expected that with the iOS 18.4 update coming in March, this new and smarter Siri will be rolled out for general users.
Utkarsh works as a Sub-Editor at 1Tak News. Technology and gadgets are his main beats, and he also tracks automobiles. A graduate of Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, he began his journalism career in 2023 and has built experience across digital media platforms like 1Tak. Besides technology, he also has considerable experience covering national affairs, politics, research, and international news.
