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Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

cnbc.com

491–500 of 674 posts

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted to, they could throw massive amounts of cash on it like Google and Facebook are, with the latter poaching Apple employees with 200$ million pay packages: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-09/meta-poac... But why on earth would they do that? It's both cheaper and safer to buy Google's model, with whom they already have a longstanding relationship. Examples include the search engine deal, a…

No, they couldn't, because all current and future ethe training hardware is already tied up by contracts from the frontier labs. Apple could not simply buy its way in given how constricted the supply is.

You can rent data centers for this stuff nowadays and Apple can easily outbid any competitor.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current US environment, no one can survive going against Trump, and as recently evidenced, this is meant literally. The US, for all intents and purposes, is now a kleptocracy. Rule of law, freedom of speech, even court orders, all of that doesn't matter any more in practice. There will always be some way for the federal government to strong-arm anyone into submission.

I do not usually comment on politics but just this one time, and hopefully I can wordsmith it without taking a political stance. When Trump started his campaign, circa 2011 with the birth certificate, he did not know he will win or not, but he made it his life's mission. Countering him will take the same zeal. I know we have a precedence of presidents retiring, but unless Obama (and Hillary and Biden and Kamala) hits…

I'm not American, but in my opinion Newsom+AOC might have the zeal and voter base to MAYBE do something.

Newsom (or his PR team) knows how to play the troll game correctly, hitting low blows and not sticking to the fucking high ground.

AOC on the other hand will make the MAGA base _so_ irrationally angry they might do something actually stupid. She's also got Bernie's views, which might make America a place I want to visit some day in the next decade again. I've literally turned down all expenses paid company trips to USA a few times because I just don't want to risk either not getting into the country or not getting back.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but they also haven’t generated spicy deep fakes and talked kids into suicide with their products. It’s just how Apple does things: They still have no folding phone, under-screen finger print scanner, under-screen front-cam, etc.

They did still overpromise and that should not be the way Apples does things (although it was hardly the first time; the AirPower mat was announced in 2017).

To be fair, all tech companies do this. Sell first, implement later, hype hype hype. Of course we’d like to think Apple was better, but well.. it isn’t.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#494

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with An…

True. Also Gemini is the boring model, heavily sanitised for corporate applications. At least it admits this if you press it. It fits Apple here very well.

Personally I wouldn't use it, it still belongs to an advertiser specialised on extracting user information. Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. But clean smell also means bland smell.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#495
post #372
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the top 3 features you’re missing right now?

I'll bite 1. Have a user interface. Sometimes I'll ask a question and Siri actually provides a good enough answer, and while I'm reading it, the Siri response window just disappears. Siri is this modal popup with no history, no App, and no UI at all really. Siri doesn't have a user interface, and it should have one so that I can go back to sessions and resume them or reference them later and interact with Siri in mor…

>If ChatGPT could be bound to a power button long-press, then I'd cease to use Siri for this use case

This should be possible, go to Settings->Action Button->Controls and search for ChatGPT

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#496
post #159

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with An…

> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.

> Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door

They don't though, Android is clearly ahead in AI integration (even Samsung are running TV ads mocking iPhones AI capability) yet still iPhones sales are breaking records - the majority of their phone buyers still prefer an iPhone over an AI capable other phone.

They can take their time to develop AI integration that others can't deploy - 'secure/private', deep integration with iCloud, location services, processing on device etc. that will provide the product moat to increase sales.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest NEW thing here is that this isn't white-labeled. Apple is officially acknowledging Google as the model that will be powering Siri. That explicit acknowledgment is a pretty big deal. It will make it harder for Apple to switch to its own models later on.

I don't see why - iOS originally shipped with Google Maps as standard, for example. Macs shipped with Internet Explorer as standard before Safari existed

Apple ultimately developed their own map application specifically because Google was unwilling to remove the Google logo from the Google Maps app, no matter the price.

It'll absolutely be interesting to see if "Google" or "Gemini" appear anywhere in the new Siri UI.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#498

If nothing else, this was likely driven by Google being the most stable of the AI labs. Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product. Also for Apple, they know their provider has ridiculously deep pockets, a good understanding and infrastructure in place for large enterprises, and a fairly diversified revenue stream. Going with An…

True. Also Gemini is the boring model, heavily sanitised for corporate applications. At least it admits this if you press it. It fits Apple here very well. Personally I wouldn't use it, it still belongs to an advertiser specialised on extracting user information. Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher. But clean smell also means bland smell.

Google, as the designer of the original transformer, is designer of the original "mechanism" for inserting ads into a prompt answer in realtime to the highest bidder, so it makes sense from that part too.

Given my stance about AI, I'll definitely not use it, but I understand Apple's choice. Also this choice will give them enough time to develop their infrastructure and replace parts of it with their own, if they are planning to do it.

> Not that I expect that other AI companies value privacy much higher.

Breaching privacy and using it for its own benefit is AIs business model. There are no ethical players here. Neither from training nor from respecting their users' privacy perspective. Just next iteration of what social media companies do.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#499
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.

Yes but they also haven’t generated spicy deep fakes and talked kids into suicide with their products. It’s just how Apple does things: They still have no folding phone, under-screen finger print scanner, under-screen front-cam, etc.

Apple is always behind on industry trends, but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool. This is what will happen with the folding phones this year, if rumors are true.

Re: Apple picks Gemini to power Siri

#500
I thought it was interesting that a Google flack stressed that the model would run on Apple's compute, and seemed to imply it might even run on-device. Allegedly this was said to allay the (expected) privacy concerns of Apple users who wouldn't want their Siri convos shared with Google.

But I saw something else in that statement. Is there going to be some quantized version of Gemini tailored to run on-device on an M4? If so, that would catapult Apple into an entirely new category merging consumer hardware with frontier models.

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