Many compare today’s AI revolution to the smartphone era, where Apple pioneered a widespread change. However, when it comes to AI, the company has struggled to replicate that same level of success. As the company continues to grapple with criticism over its Apple Intelligence initiatives, it is undertaking multiple steps in an attempt to redeem itself.
Recently, Bloomberg reported that Apple has been planning to partner with AI providers like Google, OpenAI and Perplexity to integrate AI-enabled search features into its web browser Safari. This information was revealed by Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, during his testimony in the US justice department’s lawsuit against Google. Cue also revealed that Apple has been in similar discussions with Perplexity.
While this threatens Google’s position as the default search engine on Safari, for which Apple gets paid $20 billion a year, it also signifies that Apple is leaning towards more partnerships to catch up with its competitors in the AI space.
The company has already partnered with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which integrates directly with iPhone’s operating system, iOS, as a part of Apple Intelligence.
Users can access ChatGPT’s capabilities to execute AI tasks that are deemed difficult to process using the local, on-device three-billion-parameter large language model. Notably, ChatGPT can be used in Siri, system-wide writing tools, and photo and document understanding features.
As per Apple’s backend, Google Gemini integration with Apple Intelligence will work like ChatGPT for these features:
– Siri Integration
– Compose with Gemini in Writing Tools
– Visual Intelligence (beyond just google image search) pic.twitter.com/dgfyxUCm3e— Aaron (@aaronp613) March 7, 2025
Furthermore, iPhones may also soon integrate Google’s Gemini AI model. At the antitrust trial, Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the company “expects” to strike a deal with Apple in the middle of this year, and a roll-out could happen by the end of it, The Verge reported.
Cook also told Pichai that “more third-party AI models” would ship on Apple Intelligence this year. To substantiate this, The Bloomberg report further mentioned that, according to Cue, Apple also looked at Grok, and DeepSeek for AI related features. Cue also added that the company’s agreement with OpenAI lets it add models from other providers as well to the operating system.
Siri Needs to Deliver
AIM reached out to Max Weinbach, technology analyst at Creative Strategies, to get a perspective on Apple’s path going forward. He believes that Apple might already hold the key to redeem itself.
“Apple Intelligence largely exists as it was announced. The only thing [left for it] to ‘redeem’ itself is to make the new Siri work, as it was demonstrated at WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2024,” Weinbach said.
This might just be true, as Apple has still not upgraded Siri as promised. Moreover, the company announced that the release of Siri’s big AI update has been delayed until 2026. Reports highlighted that Apple struggled to mitigate various bugs and engineering problems within Siri.
For context, at the WWDC 2024, Apple announced a new Siri with improved speech recognition capabilities and awareness about information shown on screen, which could aslo take actions across various apps.
Given the delay, Apple also faces a lawsuit for ‘false advertising’.
As reported by Axios, the lawsuit stated, “Contrary to defendant’s claims of advanced AI capabilities, the products offered a significantly limited or entirely absent version of Apple Intelligence, misleading consumers about its actual utility and performance. Worse yet, defendant promoted its products based on these overstated AI capabilities, leading consumers to believe they were purchasing a device with features that did not exist or were materially misrepresented.”
When an improved Siri arrives, it would likely mean relying on stronger foundational models.
Regarding new and upcoming collaborations, Weinbach suggested that while there may not be a significant change, users would be offered another choice. He added that it might just be another model that can be used for the actions that an external service (OpenAI’s ChatGPT) already performs.
In conclusion, the key to Apple Intelligence’s success lies in Siri’s ability to deliver on its promises. Whether new partnerships will meaningfully improve Siri remains to be seen.
Given how Apple is highly protective of user data and Siri, by the way it functions, requires access to private information from users’ apps like calendars, messages, photos, and more, Weinbach said. It is unlikely Apple would let any partner models function like Siri does, considering how privacy is deeply rooted in the company’s value proposition.
Besides, Weinbach also believes there is a misconception regarding how Apple’s AI success, or failure for that matter, is measured. “Most people seem to think Apple Intelligence is a competitor to Gemini or ChatGPT. It’s fundamentally different. Siri in Apple Intelligence is the competitor, not Apple Intelligence as a whole,” he added.
All things considered, it wouldn’t be delusional to not keep hopes on Apple’s future with AI, even if they’re primarily dependent on on-device processing for various AI tasks. “Apple’s focus on fully vertical silicon and software works, and it’ll work well. But they need more cloud compute scale and stronger models,” Weinbach further said.
Notably, Apple’s breakthrough with the Arm architecture M series of processors on a MacBook significantly improved both performance and battery life, alongside working with the macOS, which is the company’s indigenous operating system.
Recently, Apple also announced that it is focusing on more promising, yet privacy-preserving training methods to improve Apple Intelligence. The company is also quite active with regard to AI and machine learning research. If everything comes through, it’d be a treat for Apple fanboys to counter criticism over Apple Intelligence in the future.
