It’s no secret that Apple was tardy to the AI party. Since the boon of generative AI in tardy 2022 and early 2023, when every corner of the tech world something thanks to artificial intelligence, the world wondered what Apple would do with this technology. Not much so far.
However, all rumors point to Apple’s massive software updates, such as iOS 18, which usher in the company’s first major forays into artificial intelligence. It won’t be a surprise if you upgrade to your iPhone this year and find a ChatGPT-like version of Siri or see a helpful AI assistant when using Apple apps like Pages or Keynote. It’s nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it would put Apple in line with other companies that integrate artificial intelligence into their platforms.
Of course, we all expected Apple to support these features using its own proprietary Vast Language Models (LLM). But apparently Apple can call in reinforcements.
According to BloombergApple is currently in talks with Google about using Gemini to power upcoming AI features on the iPhone. While the idea of Apple using another company’s AI technology is certainly a surprise – let alone from a competitor as vast as Google – Gemini wouldn’t be Apple’s only AI engine. According to Apple reports, yes continues to apply its own LLM for On-Device Generative AI: Everything your iPhone can process on its own is made by Apple. However, any AI tasks requiring outsourcing to the cloud will be delegated to Gemini.
This isn’t necessarily a great look for Apple. Look, it wouldn’t be the first company to do this: Samsung has partnered with Google to improve Galaxy AI features, and Google could form similar partnerships with other companies. But it is Apple, Despite everything. Sure, they partner with companies like Google on certain features and improvements (Google paid massive money to be the default search engine in Safari for years), but I can’t imagine they’d want to apply a competitor’s AI technology unless they absolutely had to. to do . I see ads praising Apple’s AI as not only the “most advanced” on the market, but also the most secure. It’s a harder sell when half of your features are sent to Google servers and processed by Google’s AI.
That said, if Apple really is as far behind in the area of generative AI as some think, it may need to engage in such a partnership. Investors seem to like it: Apple shares rose 2.5% on the news, while Alphabet shares rose 6%. Apple gets the AI technology it needs to implement features that other companies already have, while Google makes a lot of money from it. Not to mention that such a move would mean increased competition with OpenAI and Microsoft: Apple and Google will run on Gemini, while Microsoft’s Copilot will run on ChatGPT.
Of course, nothing is certain and this is purely based on reports. Apple hasn’t announced anything definitive in the AI space yet, feature-wise. Apple researchers continue to publish their work on artificial intelligence, like the company’s MM1 AI model, an open source image editor and image animator. And while some or all of these changes may make their way into actual iOS or macOS features, we haven’t seen them yet.
