Apple’s reliance on Google’s Gemini AI model to power key features of Apple Intelligence — including an upgraded Siri — highlights a perceived shortfall in the iPhone’s independent AI capabilities, according to a recent Bloomberg News newsletter analysis.
In a piece titled “Apple’s Use of Google Gemini Shows iPhone’s Lack of AI Advantage,” author Austin Carr argues that Apple’s multiyear partnership with Google, announced on January 12, 2026, effectively undercuts claims of a unique AI edge for the iPhone. The deal sees Apple integrating Gemini models and Google’s cloud technology as the foundation for future Apple Foundation Models and enhanced AI experiences on iOS devices. This move, Carr suggests, resembles an admission that Apple’s in-house AI efforts have not kept pace with rivals, particularly Google itself, which natively embeds Gemini across Android ecosystems for seamless, advanced features.
The partnership builds on earlier reports from 2025, when Bloomberg News revealed Apple was in talks to leverage a custom or powerful Gemini variant (including a potential 1.2 trillion parameter model) for a revamped Siri. Estimates at the time pegged Apple’s annual payments to Google in the range of $1 billion, with some analysts later suggesting the overall deal could be worth several billion dollars over time—echoing the lucrative, long-standing Google search default agreement on iPhones.
While Apple has positioned Apple Intelligence as a privacy-focused, on-device-first AI suite (launched in stages starting in 2024–2025), the Bloomberg News piece contends that outsourcing core generative capabilities to a competitor casts doubt on its differentiation. Android devices, powered directly by Google’s own AI stack, can offer cutting-edge features without similar dependencies, potentially giving them an advantage in real-world performance and innovation speed.
Carr’s analysis frames this as part of the broader Apple-Google dynamic: a mix of cooperation and competition. The collaboration validates Gemini’s strength while underscoring Apple’s challenges in building frontier-level models independently amid massive infrastructure demands. For iPhone users, the result could mean more capable Siri and Apple Intelligence tools sooner — but at the cost of relying on a rival’s technology, which may erode the perception of iPhone as the undisputed leader in smartphone AI.
As the AI landscape evolves rapidly in 2026, this partnership could accelerate feature rollouts for iPhone owners while raising strategic questions about Apple’s long-term positioning against Google, OpenAI, and other players. Apple has not disclosed full deal terms, but the arrangement appears structured as a cloud computing contract, allowing Apple to tap Gemini without fully replicating the massive training and compute investments required for equivalent models.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last August:
Google Gemini? Why not just get a Samsung Galaxy phone which already integrates Google’s Gemini AI as a core component of their AI-powered features?
Google Gemini on an iPhone offers precious little differentiation from Samsung, the chief iPhone knockoff peddler.
If you’re going to with an external AI partner, why not choose the smartest one? We find xAI’s Grok to be more accurate and useful than Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT, and the rest. – MacDailyNews, July 21, 2025
Apple would likely need a CEO who is more open to thinking outside the box than the one with which it’s currently saddled.
Google Gemini. Puleeze. OpenAI’s ChapGPT or Anthropic’s Claude would be better choices. Even better would be for Apple to allow users to choose – gasp! – which AI model they’d like to underpin Siri.
Regardless of what Apple chooses, they will at least be safely behind Apple’s privacy wall.
The issues are: Google’s Gemini is not the best and everyone knows it, Google has a poor reputation for privacy that will tarnish Apple’s, and Google, hello, ripped off the iPhone with Android. Enough with the Google, Apple!
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