I really hope Apple is working hard on improving on-device models for their use case so they can get out of this.
Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
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Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#12The question is if Apple will buy TPUs to run it too.
$1B for the software and $1B for the hardware, every few years.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#13Today I asked to my homepod:
> "Hey Siri, whens the next Formula 1 race in Montreal"
and she responds with the same infuriating answer I typically get
> "Hmm, I found some interesting results on the web, I can show them to you if you ask again from your iPhone"
I don't care what pride Apple has to swallow, or if they have to layoff 10,000 people.
I just want my device ecosystem to be able to do what its competitors have been able to do for a decade, or what Ive been able to build myself for the last 3 years. A working and useful voice assistant.
At this point Im convinced Tim Cook could sit at a terminal himself and ship a better version of what Apple has in an afternoon.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#14Mind blowing they couldn't get this to work. It's struck me lately that the models don't seem to matter anymore, they're all equally good.
The UX and integration with regular phone features is what makes the tool shine and by now there should be plenty of open source models and know how to create their own.
What is Google offering that Apple can't figure out on their own?
Maybe people don't personal assitant AI enough to justify the investment? My phone has probably 6 or 7 AI tools that have talking features that I don't ever explore.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#15If true this is the deal of the century. Apple pay 1/14th of a Wang per year for a top tier model whereas Meta burn multiple Wangs a year in salary alone and get garbage.
When is this not true?
It is cheaper to buy GPUs than to develop the capabilities to develop GPUs.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#16Coincidentally, Google pays Apple over a billion dollars a year (est. at 1.5B) to be the default search in iOS. Could be re-titled.
Google closes their trade deficit to half a billion dollars per year.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#17So now it does not matter what platform you choose for your smartphone, you cannot escape Google AI surveillance. Well you can shut it off on the iPhone I guess, but that means no more privacy focused Apple Intelligence. Next to all the money they poured into Liquid glAss, this will be the worst investment Apple has ever made.
If iOS opened up the ability to implement your own assistant like VoiceInteractionService on Android, you wouldn't have to worry about it. On Android, if you don't like Google providing the service, you can switch to OpenAI, Alexa, or even your own service.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#18This is remarkable if you consider how much it must wound Apple's pride to make this deal with their main rival in the smartphone software space, especially after all the fuss they made about "Apple Intelligence". It's a tacit admission that Google is just better at this kind of thing.
> wound Apple's pride
do businesses really "think" in a personified manner as this? isnt it just what the accounting resolves to as the optimal path?
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#19So now it does not matter what platform you choose for your smartphone, you cannot escape Google AI surveillance. Well you can shut it off on the iPhone I guess, but that means no more privacy focused Apple Intelligence. Next to all the money they poured into Liquid glAss, this will be the worst investment Apple has ever made.
This assumes they'll make the data available to Google. With all their secure "Private Cloud Compute" stuffs they advertised, there's a good chance it will not be shared.
Giving credit where its due, I think the private cloud compute stuff of Apple is really interesting architecure wise. I think it included using ARM Cpu's with a special realm ability to prevent certain types of attacks to minimize the amount of trust if I remember correctly.
Re: Apple nears $1B Google deal for custom Gemini model to power Siri
#20Much like they are paying the leaders in other specialties instead of becoming eg. a assembly company (Foxconn) or a search company (Google Search) they are not going to try and be a leader in at least large language models.
Am I interpreting that correctly?
I can understand that to a degree but that means the future for Apple is as a technology integrator, not a fundamental technology company.
As I type that out I guess I’m realizing that has always been true.