Apple adopts Google's Gemini

Google has now publicly confirmed that Apple’s next Siri will run on Gemini, with a launch planned for later in 2026. (macrumors.com) The confirmation came from Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian during Google Cloud Next 2026 in Las Vegas on April 22. He said Google is collaborating with Apple as its “preferred cloud provider” for next-generation Apple foundation models based on Gemini technology. (macrumors.com) (appleworld.today) Apple has not yet published its own new Siri launch date, but it did say on March 7, 2025 that some artificial intelligence upgrades for Siri were slipping to 2026. Apple said those features would give Siri more awareness of personal context and let it take actions within and across apps. (theprint.in) (developer.apple.com) That description matches the Siri Apple previewed at Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, 2024. Apple said then that Siri would gain personal context, onscreen awareness and the ability to take hundreds of new actions across Apple and third-party apps. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) The Gemini confirmation helps explain why Apple’s Siri roadmap changed. Instead of relying only on in-house models, Apple appears to be using Google’s large model stack as the base for the assistant it showed in 2024 and failed to ship on time. (theprint.in) (macrumors.com) Apple had already shown it was willing to mix outside models into Apple Intelligence. In December 2024, Apple rolled out ChatGPT integration in Siri and Writing Tools, while saying requests could be routed with privacy protections such as obscured Internet Protocol addresses. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) What changes now is the scope. ChatGPT was presented as an optional handoff for certain requests, while Google is describing Gemini as the basis for Apple’s next-generation foundation models and the more personalized Siri itself. (support.apple.com) (appleworld.today) Reports in March said Apple had permission to “distill” Gemini, meaning it could train smaller versions for specific tasks and devices. That would fit Apple’s long-running effort to keep some Apple Intelligence work on-device and send heavier jobs to private cloud systems. (appleworld.today) (apple.com) Apple’s developer materials still say Siri’s personal context understanding, onscreen awareness and in-app actions are “in development” for a future software update. As of April 26, 2026, Google’s stage remarks are the clearest public signal that those features are finally tied to a specific outside model provider. (developer.apple.com) (macrumors.com) The next checkpoint is likely Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2026, where Apple can show whether the assistant it promised in 2024 is now ready to ship with a Gemini core. (ithinkdiff.com) (apple.com)