Apple has finally admitted what the rest of us have known for years: Siri is terrible. According to reports from MacRumors and Bloomberg, Apple has struck a deal with Google to integrate the Gemini AI model directly into Siri and future iOS releases. After more than a decade of living in last place among voice assistants, Siri is about to borrow someone else’s brain.
This is a fascinating twist; Apple is outsourcing its next big AI leap to a rival. Tim Cook’s team will reportedly use Gemini to handle natural language, contextual memory, and reasoning tasks, while Apple’s own “Apple Intelligence” layer will focus on privacy and on-device inference. In other words, Apple will wrap Gemini in Liquid Glass and call it innovation.
I’m fine with it. I live on my iPhone, and I like the strategy of a customized Gemini with access to the data it needs to make my life easier.
For Google, this is a massive win. Every iPhone using Gemini is a data and distribution channel that reaches hundreds of millions of premium users. For Apple, reports say it’s a stopgap (while they take the time to build something of their own). Those are rumors, of course, so I’m looking at this as a first step into a multi-model future where platform moats dissolve and “intelligence as a service” becomes a new layer of the operating system. This could be completely wrong, BTW, but sometimes it’s cheaper to rent than to buy.
Apple was meant to debut an updated version of Siri in iOS 18, but technical deficiencies forced a full architectural overhaul and delayed the rollout. The smarter Apple Intelligence Siri is now expected in iOS 26.4, coming in spring 2026.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.