Apple just struck a formal agreement with Google to test Gemini AI models for Siri's upcoming search overhaul, marking a surprising alliance between the tech rivals. The partnership positions Apple to challenge OpenAI and Perplexity in AI-powered search while accelerating Siri's long-awaited intelligence upgrade expected in iOS 26.4 next March.
Apple and Google just formalized one of the most unexpected partnerships in tech, with the iPhone maker agreeing to test Google's Gemini AI models to power Siri's next-generation search capabilities. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Google has emerged as the frontrunner to help Apple transform its voice assistant into an AI-powered search engine that can rival OpenAI and Perplexity.
The collaboration centers around a feature internally dubbed "World Knowledge Answers," which will let users ask Siri complex questions and receive AI-generated summaries pulled from web results. Unlike current Siri responses, the new interface will seamlessly blend text, photos, videos, and location data into comprehensive answers that mirror the sophisticated search experiences users have come to expect from ChatGPT and Perplexity's platforms.
This represents a dramatic acceleration of Apple's previously delayed Siri upgrade plans, which had been stalled as the company struggled to build competitive AI capabilities internally. The new partnership allows Apple to leapfrog months of development by leveraging Google's proven Gemini technology, running on Apple's own servers to maintain privacy controls.
The technical architecture reveals Apple's hybrid approach to AI supremacy. While the company plans to use its own models for searching personal user data on-device, it's outsourcing the heavy lifting of web search and content summarization to Google's infrastructure. Apple is also evaluating Anthropic's Claude alongside Gemini for Siri's "planner" function, which interprets voice commands and coordinates responses across the assistant's three-part system.
For Google, the deal provides a crucial foothold in Apple's ecosystem despite their ongoing search partnership tensions. With the Department of Justice's antitrust case threatening Google's $20 billion annual payments to remain Safari's default search engine, this AI collaboration offers a new revenue stream and deeper integration into iOS.
