According to Bloomberg’s Mark Garman, we’re about to see the fruits of Apple’s recently announced AI partnership with Google for the first time.
Gurman reports that Apple plans to announce a new version of Siri in the second half of February. The Siri update, which uses Google’s Gemini AI model, will reportedly be the first to fulfill a promise Apple made in June 2024, with the ability to access users’ personal data and on-screen content to complete tasks.
And this comes ahead of an even bigger upgrade that Apple plans to announce at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Garman said. This version of Siri should be more conversational, in the style of other chatbots such as ChatGPT, and could potentially run directly on Google’s cloud infrastructure.
Previous reports suggested that Apple was struggling to get its AI strategy back on track. In fact, Garman said Apple’s Mike Rockwell told members of the foundation’s team over the summer that one of Garman’s previous reports was a “bullish statement.” But with the partnership with Google and the recent departure of Apple’s head of AI, John Gianandrea, the company does seem to have found a new direction.
