Following the blockbuster announcement of a multi-year AI partnership between Apple and Google, new details from The Information reveal how Apple plans to take full ownership of the experience: by independently fine-tuning Google’s Gemini models to power the revamped Siri and future Apple Intelligence features.
Unlike the current ChatGPT integration — where more complex queries than the current Siri can handle (which are myriad) are explicitly handed off to OpenAI with clear branding — the upcoming Gemini-based enhancements will run invisibly in the background. Prototypes of the more personalized Siri show no Google or Gemini branding whatsoever, ensuring the intelligence feels purely Apple-native. Users will interact with an enhanced Siri that delivers more detailed, conversational, ChatGPT-like answers to factual questions, better emotional support, and improved handling of nuanced or relational queries (such as identifying family members from context in messages).
According to sources familiar with the matter cited in the report, Apple retains significant control over the underlying technology:The company can fine-tune Gemini’s responses on its own to align with Apple’s preferred tone, style, privacy standards, and safety guidelines.
Apple also has the option to request specific tweaks directly from Google for broader model adjustments.
Processing will occur exclusively on-device or via Apple’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, preventing Google from accessing any user data and upholding Apple’s industry-leading privacy commitments.
This level of customization marks a departure from typical third-party AI integrations and serves as a strategic bridge: Apple gains access to Gemini’s advanced capabilities (including rumored massive parameter counts in custom variants) while continuing development of its in-house foundation models. The partnership, reportedly worth around $1 billion annually to Google, allows Apple to accelerate Siri’s long-delayed overhaul without fully outsourcing the user-facing experience.
The phased rollout is expected to begin as early as spring 2026 (potentially with iOS 26.4), starting with core conversational improvements. More advanced features — like memory of past interactions, proactive suggestions based on calendar and location data, and deeper app integrations — could arrive later, possibly announced at WWDC 2026.
This approach not only addresses years of criticism about Siri’s relative lag in generative AI but also positions Apple to deliver a “smarter Siri” that feels distinctly its own — powered by a rival’s tech, yet customized, controlled, and branded as Apple Intelligence through and through.
As one report summarized the sentiment in the tech community: It’s Gemini under the hood, but Siri all the way on the surface.
MacDailyNews Take: All but the most-knowledgeable iPhone users may soon experience what’s expected to be a massive Siri upgrade without ever realizing that it’s Google really doing the thinking behind the curtain.
Hopefully, the days of a COO masquerading as an Apple CEO are finally drawing nigh. Apple deserves a visionary leader who can once again drive relentless, world-changing product innovation. – MacDailyNews, December 9, 2025
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Apple News is garbage — just what you would expect from Tim Cook.
Apple News Shut Out Conservatives All December. That’s Not an Accident.
https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2026/01/13/apple-news-shut-out-conservatives-all-december-thats-not-an-accident-n4948232
pjmedia is a radical right wing propaganda site. All you need to do is look at the thumbnails and how they’re written to see what it is.
This is a repeat of the Pink operating system fiasco.
Apple engineering had an operating version of Pink back in 1990. Senior management didn’t like a quick turn in the Macintosh System Software, as it was called back then. Senior management wanted a smooth and easy transition that would have made the transition to a fully modern OS 100% unnoticeable to the end user. They wanted the shipping version of Pink to be the simplest transition for users that could even in theory imaginable. So Blue was implemented and the Mac operating system limped along. Fast forward to 1976 and Windows 95, with its revamped and modern (for the time) OS had been shipping. Meanwhile Apple was in the middle of its “Dark Days” and even for a short while on the verge of bankruptcy.
Then Apple internally admitted that all its internal attempts to create an OS that could do a smooth transition were failures. Apple traded off buying BeOS versus NeXT’s OS. As most of you here know, Apple went with NeXT’s OS.
Today, Apple has had a machine learning, fuzzy logic, neural network, and a plethora of other methodologies in the works for decades. Just think back to the public demonstration and release of “Casper” back in 1993. But… Apple has been extremely slow to advance this. It’s not the engineering staff’s failure. It’s Apple senior and middle management failure.
Is Apple reliving the early and mid 1990s? I certainly hope not, but it is starting to look that way.
Apparently, Apple management has given up and decided to make a deal with the devil. Given Google’s horrific track record with regard to privacy and using user personal information for their profit, this does not bode all all well for Apple users going forward.