Will Siri Really Be ‘Powered by Gemini’?

The tech world was rocked this week when Apple and Google officially announced a new deal to bring Gemini to Apple Intelligence. While there was enough buzz last year that it wasn’t a total surprise, the public announcement marks a new milestone in Apple’s AI efforts — and a tacit admission that the company isn’t yet ready to chart its own course.

While many analysts such as Ming-Chi Kuo believe the partnership is temporary — a move to allow Apple to deliver on its promised Siri improvements in a timely manner — it’s also telling that the deal was announced as a “multi-year collaboration.” While two years arguably still counts as “multi,” this still hints that it’s more than a stop-gap. Apple undoubtedly hopes to someday be able to do AI on its own, but for now, it needs help.

However, the biggest question on many people’s minds is what this actually means for the iPhone. Is Apple ready to give up on its branding and concede territory to Google, or is this simply a subtle, behind-the-scenes partnership?

After all, Apple signing a deal with Google to power any core feature of the iPhone is almost unprecedented. Sure, it has a multi-billion deal to make Google the default search engine, but that’s not an arena Apple has ever shown any real interest in playing in.

The iPhone hasn’t relied on Google for any core features since its humble beginnings in 2007, when Google Maps and YouTube powered the navigation and entertainment experience. The built-in YouTube app — which was developed by Apple — made way for the App Store a few years later, and Apple eventually ended its deal with Google in favor of its own mapping platform.

In many ways, that leaves the new deal to let Google power Apple Intelligence feeling like a step backward. However, knowing Apple as we do, there’s no reason to believe this is in any way a capitulation to Gemini. Rather, it’s a strategic partnership to use the best of Google’s AI models while still preserving Apple’s brand.

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Will You See the Gemini Brand on Your iPhone?

That was already evident from the way this announcement was made. The “joint statement” went to CNBC and was later shared by Google. It remains conspicuously absent on Apple’s Newsroom. As John Gruber pointed out at Daring Fireball, that strongly implied that this news isn’t for Apple’s end users, but rather its investors and other industry watchers.

Apple has been unusually quiet about this partnership, but it’s not hard to read between the lines of what the joint statement said — and what it didn’t.

While “Gemini” is the branding for Google’s consumer-facing AI model, it’s mentioned by name only once in the statement, to say that Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models, compared to multiple mentions of Apple Intelligence and Apple Foundation Models. This makes it pretty clear that Apple isn’t bringing Gemini onto the iPhone, but merely using Google’s AI models as the foundation for its own.

In case there was any doubt, The Information has filled in the blanks with a new report that reveals that not only are we unlikely to see the word “Gemini” ever appear in the core OS experience, but that Apple itself may also tweak it to the point where Apple Intelligence may share only the most basic things in common with Gemini.

Google is providing the framework and foundation, but Apple has the right to either ask Google to adjust it, or do so on its own, without asking Google for input or permission.

That’s because, as the joint announcement already suggests, the entire thing will be running on Apple’s infrastructure — either directly on your device or on the Apple owned and controlled Private Cloud Compute servers.

None of this is too surprising, as it’s not only how Apple rolls (can you really imagine a brand-first company Apple letting Google’s branding show through anywhere?), but it also aligns with every reliable report we’ve heard over the past few months, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said when discussing the potential partnership in November:

While the two companies have arguably gone public with the announcement, as Gruber points out, that’s as much about assuring investors that everything is on track and there’s no need to fear that Siri will continue to face delays. Google has already proven that it can create a reliable chatbot, so name-dropping Gemini helps to head off any potential panic as we move into 2026.

What Will Gemini Do for Siri?

So, while Siri will technically be powered by the same models as Gemini, it won’t be “Powered by Gemini” in the most literal sense. It’s more accurate to think of Siri as Gemini’s sibling or cousin, sharing the same ancestry but having its own unique personalities and capabilities.

Gurman has also revealed in more recent reports that Apple is using a massive 1.2 trillion-parameter model specifically optimized for Siri, not just a standard “off-the-shelf” version of Gemini. To put that in context, Apple’s previous internal “Ajax” models were reportedly only around 150 billion parameters. This isn’t just a tweak; it’s an eightfold increase in brain power for Siri.

According to The Information, the new and improved Siri will leverage Google’s models to help it answer real-world knowledge directly. While Siri has already been able to do that since iOS 18.2 through the ChatGPT extension, that’s an opt-in feature that not everyone is comfortable with

That’s where the biggest distinction comes in with Apple’s new approach. When the company debuted its ChatGPT integration, this was an arms-length extension, not a core component of Apple Intelligence. While Apple said that it would eventually offer other extensions — and there were reports that Google Gemini could soon be one of them — this latest development is going in an entirely different direction, by baking Gemini’s capabilities directly into Siri, but doing so in a way that’s entirely under Apple’s control.

This means that when you ask Siri a more complex question, it will be able to answer it without asking you if you want to ask ChatGPT or another AI bot. It will operate entirely under Apple’s control, on-device or on its PCC infrastructure, without resorting to handing off data to OpenAI or even Google.

Interestingly, The Information adds that Apple also hopes to use Google’s AI smarts to make Siri more empathetic and conversational.

It remains to be seen how far Apple will go down this road, but it’s likely to lean toward the side of caution, as it will almost certainly want to avoid the kind of controversy that’s stemmed from other AI chatbots becoming too familiar with their users.

When Will We See Siri Get Smarter?

While Apple is reportedly still on track for an iOS 26.4 launch of its more intelligent Siri, it appears we could be looking at a staged rollout for some of the more advanced capabilities.

Personal context will likely come first, along with the ability to use AI to improve Siri’s understanding of natural language, making it easier to get it to do things without having to resort to specific phrasing. However, The Information notes that more sophisticated things like remembering past conversations for context and “agentic” features that can proactively notify you of things like traffic and calendar events will take a bit longer. Apple’s expected to announce some of these for iOS 27 during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

So, is Siri truly “Powered by Gemini”? On a purely technical level, the answer is yes, but if Apple’s strategy holds, the average user will never know it.

By white-labeling Google’s most advanced models and running them on its own private servers, Apple has found a way to bridge its “AI gap” without handing the keys to its kingdom. Google may be the silent architect helping to build the foundation, but Apple still owns the house, and will keep its name on the front door.

Whether this remains a permanent partnership or a high-stakes stopgap until Apple can build its own “frontier” model remains the $20 billion question — but for the millions of iPhone users waiting for a smarter Siri, the “who” matters much less than the “when,” and the most important part of this is that it looks like Apple will be able to deliver on its promises without compromising on any of its most important core principles.

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