Apple's next-gen Siri will be powered by Google's Gemini AI

Apple is reportedly working on a new version of Siri, which is powered by Google Gemini. A report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that the Cupertino company will pay Google $1 Billion per year for using its tech.

This shouldn't come as a big surprise, since Apple has an agreement worth $20 Billion a year with Google to use its search engine as the default in Safari. It also wants to add AI search engines to Safari.

Apple has fumbled AI badly, and Siri powered by Apple Intelligence on iPhone, iPad and Mac is nowhere close to what was promised. Meanwhile, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google have been very successful with their own AI services. After integrating ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence and Siri, Apple had decided to explore using third-parties to power Siri's capabilities, while it continued working on its own models, a 1-trillion parameter model is expected to be launched next year. The Cupertino company had tested various solutions including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini.

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, had told CNBC last week that the company is targeting a 2026 release for the next-gen Siri, and that Apple is looking at more partnerships with AI services. That checks out with what Gurman says, the new voice assistant powered by Google Gemini could be released as part of the iOS 26.4 update in Spring 2026, and is code-named Linwood.

He mentioned that Apple will use a custom Gemini system, meaning Google will build a special version of its AI. Apple has already allocated AI server hardware for hosting the model, and it will run on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers.

This custom AI model made by Google supports 1.2 Trillion parameters, compared to the 150 Billion parameter model that powers Apple Intelligence. Google's Gemini model will be used to power Siri’s summarizer and planner, these help the voice assistant synthesize information, and execute complex tasks. Apple's own AI models will still be used for some of Siri's features.

Gurman says Apple will not promote this partnership publicly, and will treat Google as a behind-the-scenes technology supplier instead. Gee, I wonder why!

Some users weren't too pleased about the news. Apple loves to say it cares about the privacy of users, we always take a privacy-first approach, your data is yours, even we don't know what you access on your device. This new partnership with Google (and the Search deal) could make people feel otherwise, despite the AI being a custom model running on Apple's servers.

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