Rumors that have circulated for months have finally received official confirmation: Apple has formed an alliance with Google to modernize its Siri voice assistant and bring it up to contemporary standards. As reported by the American television channel CNBC, the companies have agreed on a multi-year partnership in the field of artificial intelligence.
According to the financial portal Bloomberg, shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, rose by 1.7 percent to $334.04 following the announcement. Consequently, the internet giant’s market capitalization surpassed four trillion dollars, placing it just behind Nvidia. Bloomberg noted that an increasing number of investors are beginning to view Alphabet as one of the primary winners in the current era of high demand for AI technologies.
In an official statement cited by CNBC, Apple representatives explained: “After a thorough review, we concluded that Google’s technology represents the most powerful foundation for Apple’s base models. We look forward to the innovative new capabilities this will bring to our users.”
Siri Significantly Behind Schedule
Base models serve as the foundation for a multitude of AI functions. These are models trained to recognize text, speech, and images, understand contextual relationships, draw conclusions, and generate results. Apple, however, has not achieved significant success in the independent development of such solutions.
When the company introduced its Apple Intelligence system in the summer of 2024, the new version of Siri was positioned as a centerpiece of the presentation. It was expected to become significantly smarter, more functional, and better at recognizing user intent.
However, a timely implementation proved unsuccessful. In early 2025, Apple admitted that the new version of Siri was not yet ready for a public release. “We expect to implement it next year,” a company representative noted in March, referring to 2026.
The Cost of Innovation and Privacy Concerns
It now remains to be seen how quickly the Google-Apple collaboration will result in a Siri update capable of meeting the expectations set in 2024. There is a high probability that technical specialists from both sides have been working on this integration for a considerable time. Bloomberg mentioned relevant rumors as early as last August, and in November reported that Apple planned to pay Google one billion dollars annually for the use of Gemini models. While these figures have not been officially confirmed, the payment appears modest compared to the approximately 20 billion dollars Google reportedly pays Apple annually to remain the default search engine in Safari.
While Apple representatives declined to comment when contacted by Spiegel, Google has already marked the partnership as a significant milestone on X (formerly Twitter). Google’s technology is expected to serve as the base not only for the updated Siri but also for other new features within the Apple Intelligence ecosystem.
Crucially, it was pointed out that Apple Intelligence will function either directly on Apple devices or via the secure Private Compute Cloud, even when interacting with Gemini. This approach is intended to maintain the strict privacy and data protection standards for which Apple is known.
Источник: SPIEGEL
Latest Posts
