How Apple devices powered by Google’s Gemini AI might work
A Siri that actually works reliably. AI image editing. Smart “snapshots” of your day. Wired asked some experts to forecast how Apple might use Google’s Gemini platform to enable new AI-powered applications in Apple devices.
If the deal pans out, it will be a huge collaboration between two tech giants who have long duked it out in the hardware and software space.
It also raises lots of questions about how Gemini would function on Apple’s devices—and which company would remain in control.
“In the past, this leak would have killed the deal,” says Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst and former director of marketing at Apple. “The first rule of doing a deal with Apple is don’t talk about Apple.”
But in this case, Gartenberg says, it’s highly likely the deal will in fact pan out. For one, Apple needs it to happen. When all the most breathless tech innovations over the past year and a half have been related to AI, Apple needs to prove that it’s in the game, too.
Apple has languished behind the other big gen-AI players like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The company has big plans for its own internal large language models, but whatever tools it’s cooking up are not yet ready to be released into the world. That slowness, Gartenberg says, puts Apple in a position of looking like it has been caught off guard by the broader generative AI movement.
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MacDailyNews Take: Recap: Apple was caught flat-footed, due to a lack of vision on the part of leadership. They were, uh, focused elsewhere. Apple’s traditional data center network is not fit for generative AI. It will take years and billions of dollars to catch up just to where GenAI leaders (OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, etc.) are today.
So, the only solution is to partner with a Google for the real GenAI stuff while pretending (marketing) really hard that some on-device AI Apple has whipped up in a few months is “insanely great Apple innovation” that’s at the heart of Apple’s 2024’s AI announcements when it’s really an just adjunct. Apple will tout their homegrown on-device AI and act like it’s powering everything when, in reality, it’s the Google (or whatever) licensing that’s powering most of it. Watch Apple make a big show of its on-device AI at WWDC and run many ads touting it from June onwards.
Apple hopes to buy time for the data center buildouts and investments that will be required for them to someday own their own AI technology and not have to license it from the likes of Google.
This is what happens after a decade plus with a caretaker CEO at the helm after he hits the last page of his iteration playbook, yet attempts to stay in the game for too long.
See also:
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
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