In a surprising twist to the usual rivalry between Apple and Android, it has been announced that Siri will soon be able to ask Google Gemini for help when it needs help.
At WWDC 2024, Apple announced its new approach to artificial intelligence – or Apple Intelligence as the company wants AI to now be known – and Siri got a number of improvements, like the ability to generate custom emojis, summarize long emails and help you edit photos.
So pretty standard stuff. An interesting extra detail, however, is that Siri can pass your questions to another chatbot if it thinks that service could do a better job.
Currently, ChatGPT is the only AI that Siri will focus on; however, during the keynote it was revealed that other AI would be added in the future, and after the showcase, Apple’s Craig Federighi dropped the name Gemini as an AI that Apple would like to integrate, before adding that Apple “is currently has nothing to say but that is our general direction.”
Gemini certainly makes sense, as it’s a serious alternative to ChatGPT, but given that Gemini is set to become a major feature of Android devices, we’re a little surprised to see it shared with iPhones – we’re not complaining, though.
Gemini and ChatGPT have been trading blows in recent months, and this addition is less of an improvement over the AI-enhanced Siri, and more about giving you the freedom to choose which third-party service you want to trust.
Apple’s privacy-first mantra
Siri will always ask your permission before consulting another AI, and will only share the data relevant to your question. If you don’t want to share your data with OpenAI or Google, you can disable the feature or decline Siri’s request to use those AIs.
Apple’s approach to privacy, and specifically about being transparent about how Apple handles your data, seems to be the feature of its AI services that Apple is most keen to emphasize. It boasts about private servers and says third-party organizations can verify its claims, things we don’t really see from others in the AI space at the moment.
Given its history, we have reason to believe that Apple will stick to its guns in this regard, but we won’t know exactly how it all works until we see how the new Siri works in practice. It’s currently missing from the iOS 18 beta, but hopefully we’ll get a chance to try it out soon.