Apple In Talks With Google To Integrate Gemini AI Features On iPhones
Apple is in talks to license Google’s Gemini AI engine for some new features coming to the iPhone later this year.
The terms and branding of an AI agreement or how it would be implemented have not yet been decided, but any potential deal is unlikely to be announced until Apple’s annual developers conference in June.
The two companies are in active negotiations about the matter, people who asked not to be identified.
This comes after Apple also held talks with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, according to the report.
However, a deal with Google could help the search giant expand the use of its AI services to more than 2 billion active Apple devices, bolstering its efforts to catch up with OpenAI. It could also alleviate investor concerns over Apple’s slow roll-out of AI apps, which has contributed to a 10 percent decline in its shares this year.
While Apple and Google have a long-standing partnership that makes Google the default search engine on Safari, a generative AI tie-up could invite tighter scrutiny from US regulators, who have previously sued Google for allegedly stifling competition by paying billions to Apple to maintain its search monopoly.
The report states that Apple plans to use its own homegrown AI models for some new capabilities in its upcoming iOS 18 but is seeking a partner to power generative AI features like image creation and essay writing based on simple prompts.
