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Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

cnbc.com

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Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#221

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Angostura wrote: post #21
rvz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using Siri? lmao That's the Internet Explorer of chatbots.

That's where people get confused - it's not a chatbot or an LLM - it's a voice command interface. Adding something to the shopping list, setting a timer, turning up the heating in the back room, playing some music, skipping a track, sending a message - it works perfectly well for - and that's what I use it for virtually every day. This work is to turn it it into something else, more like a chatbot, presumably

Siri is already transitioning from an intent-based NLU system to an LLM.

In iOS 18.1 (on iPhone 15+) Siri is part intent-based, part on-device "Apple Intelligence" small LLM, and in iOS 18.2 it also supports off-device ChatGPT.

This year Siri 2.0 is expected to ditch the legacy intent-based system and instead use just the small on-device Apple Intelligence LLM plus (opt-in) off-device Gemini (running in some private cloud).

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#223

Post by deergomoo »

kenjackson wrote: post #15

Somewhat surprising. AI is such a core part of the experience. It feels like a mistake to outsource it to arguably your biggest competitor.

> AI is such a core part of the experience

For who? Regular people are quite famously not clamouring for more AI features in software. A Siri that is not so stupendously dumb would be nice, but I doubt it would even be a consideration for the vast majority of people choosing a phone.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#224

Post by kachapopopow »

given that gemini 3 pro is presumably a relatively small model it wouldn't be too surprising to see an even more optimized model fit into latest iphones. I wish we knew the data behind gemini 3 flash because if my estimation that it's <50b is true, holy shit.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#225

Post by Cockbrand »

locusofself wrote: post #211

I wonder if this will my original homepods interesting to talk to or if they won't provide this on older devices.

Not sure if that's too much of a crutch for you, but it's quite easy to create an "Ask Gemini" shortcut that calls a Cloud Function and returns a spoken response. I use this on my HomePods all the time, and it's working great.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#226

Post by Ninjinka »

cpeterso wrote: post #215
runjake wrote: post #200

Apple has seemingly confirmed that the Gemini models will run under their Private Cloud Compute and so presumably Google would not have access to Siri data. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/12/apple-google-fo...

Neither Apple's nor Google's announcement says Siri will use Gemini models. Both announcements say, word for word, "Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models". I don't know what that means, but Apple and Google's marketing teams must have crafted that awkward wording carefully to satisfy some contractual nuance.

Check again: https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2010760810751017017?s=20

"These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year."

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#228

Post by troupo »

its_ethan wrote: post #165
benoau wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So because Apple chose not to spend money to develop it's own AI, it must be punished for then choosing to use another companies model? And the reason that this is an issue is because both companies are large? No they were already being sued for antitrust violations, it just mirrors what they are accused of doing to exploit their platform. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...

So if it mirrors something they were already accused of (like you're saying), my questioning should be pretty easy to map onto that issue as well? It's the line of thinking that I'm trying to dig into more, not the specifics of this case. Now it feels like you're saying "this is anti-trust because someone accused them of anti-trust before". If that case was prosecuted and Apple was found guilty, I suppose you can poi…

In Japan you can run other voice assistants than Siri (well, at least some of the functionality like calling them up via a button shortcut): https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/launchi...

Why only in Japan? Because Japan forced them to: https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/17/apple-announces-sweeping-app-...

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#229

Post by elzbardico »

nosman wrote: post #213
elzbardico wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more like Apple have no need to spend billions on training with questionable ROI when it can just rent from one of the commodity foundation model labs.

I don't know why people automatically jump to Apple's defense on this.... They absolutely did spend a lot of money and hired people to try this. They 100% do NOT have the open and bottom-up culture needed to pull off large scale AI and software projects like this. Source: I worked there

Well, they stopped.

Culture is overrated. Money talks.

They did things far more complicated from an engineering perspective. I am far more impressed by what they accomplished along TSMC with Apple Silicon than by what AI labs do.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#230

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dktp wrote: post #178
CharlesW wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm oversimplifying but this effectively turns the iPhone into a dumb terminal for Google's brain, wrapped in Apple's privacy theater. Setting aside the obligatory HN dig at the end, LLMs are now commodities and the least important component of the intelligence system Apple is building. The hidden-in-plain-sight thing Apple is doing is exposing all app data as context and all app capabilities as skills . (See App I…

My guess is that this is bigger lock-in than it might seem on paper. Google and Apple together will posttrain Gemini to Apple's specification. Google has the know-how as well as infra and will happily do this (for free ish) to continue the mutually beneficial relationship - as well as lock out competitors that asked for more money (Anthropic) Once this goes live, provided Siri improves meaningfully, it is quite an ex…

It's a very low baseline with Siri, so almost anything would be an improvement.
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