The beginning of 2026 brought one of the most significant changes for iPhone fans. Apple decided to embrace external artificial intelligence, so the new Siri will get its brain from Google. This has come as a surprise to many fans. However, Apple hopes this will put an end to the slow pace of improvements and delays to the new technology.
Growing competition forced Apple to act
For years, Apple has been known for developing all its technologies in-house, from processors to operating systems. It therefore caused all the more commotion when the company announced that someone else would provide Siri’s new “brain.” After all, that was not originally the plan.
When Apple first introduced the concept of so-called Apple Intelligence, the goal was clear: to bring the long-awaited AI assistant to the iPhone—one that would understand context, be able to control apps, and adapt to the user’s needs. But although Apple wanted to build the new features on its own internal models, the reality proved much more complicated. Developing generative AI models turned out to be more challenging than expected, and the launch of the new Siri was therefore postponed several times.
Competitive pressure and user expectations led Apple to begin considering external options such as Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. And the winner is probably obvious by now. Apple ultimately decided to use Google’s Gemini AI model.
Nothing changes for Apple users
Even though Apple will ultimately use Google’s technology, nothing will change for iPhone users. Siri will remain an Apple service running in the iOS environment with the classic Apple design, and privacy protection will also remain the same.
The Gemini models will provide the computational intelligence, but Apple will continue to oversee data management in its private cloud infrastructure and on the device.
Siri is coming in its best form yet
The new Siri should be able to understand longer conversational context, remember previous queries, and respond to specific requests within apps. It should therefore be better than its previous versions, which users felt had gradually fallen behind. The Gemini models will bring more powerful processing, suggesting a fairly significant change in the user experience.
Siri should now understand what it sees on the screen, be able to search the photo library, and formulate answers to specific questions in a similar way to how ChatGPT currently does.
Apple and Google’s partnership is nothing new
For Apple, working with Google is not a leap into the unknown. The two companies have long worked together much more closely than it may seem at first glance. For years, Google has held the privileged position of being the default search engine in Safari across iPhones, iPads, and Macs. This agreement regularly generates billions in revenue for Apple while providing users with a solution that has worked reliably over the long term. In this context, integrating Gemini into Siri makes more sense than bringing in another competing company.
Is Gemini a new beginning for Apple?
With this move, Apple has acknowledged that its own models cannot yet compete with the other major players in the AI field. Some see the adoption of external technology as a failure, because Apple now appears unable to keep pace with the new technological era without its competitors. On the other hand, this decision may be a strategic choice that gives Apple the freedom to build its own AI infrastructure.
In general, however, we can say that the partnership with Google represents a much-needed and welcome reboot for Siri, bringing it a major upgrade. It will also move Apple into a new era in which it must find a balance between internal control, performance, and the speed of innovation. Only then will it be able to answer whether adopting Gemini amounts to a defeat and how the boundaries between Apple and its partners will shift in the future.
Source: CNBC, MacRumors, The Times of India, The Verge
