Apple's Siri "Changes Heart": Reportedly Turns to Google's Gemini — Why Is Apple Surrendering in the AI Era?

Silicon Valley — March 3 — A bombshell news broke in tech circles: Apple is in talks with Google to let Gemini-powered Siri run on Google Cloud servers.

If this materializes, it would be one of the most ironic turns in the tech industry — Apple and Google are bitter rivals in mobile operating systems, AI assistants, smart homes, and more. Now, Apple needs Google's technology to rescue its AI strategy.

Siri's Awkward Position

If there's an Apple product most embarrassing in AI, Siri would be first — probably no one would dispute this.

The voice assistant launched in 2011 once amazed the world, but over the past decade, it has barely improved. When ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini successively amazed people, Siri could still only answer simple questions — "What's the weather today," "Set an alarm."

"Apple's internal teams are well aware of Siri's problems," disclosed a former Apple engineer anonymously. "But the company's DNA is hardware and design, not AI. They don't know how to catch up with OpenAI and Google."

The bigger embarrassment: last year, Apple heavily promoted "Apple Intelligence" features, including the upgraded Siri — but it was exposed that these features simply didn't exist. Faced with consumer and industry anger, Apple was forced to publicly admit these features "didn't exist then, and don't exist now."

Why Turn to Google?

The answer is simple: Apple's own AI capabilities aren't enough.

Although Apple has its own AI model research team, the gap compared to OpenAI and Google is still significant. More critically, Apple's cloud AI infrastructure is almost nonexistent.

"Training and running large language models requires massive compute infrastructure," said a cloud computing analyst. "Apple's accumulation in this area is far behind Google and Microsoft."

Thus, partnering with Google became the most pragmatic choice.

"Humiliation" or "Pragmatism"?

For Apple, is partnering with Google "humiliation" or "pragmatism"?

From a business perspective, this is indeed a reasonable choice. Google's cloud infrastructure is one of the strongest globally, and Google has years of AI accumulation. Rather than building from scratch, why not directly borrow?

"Business is war," the analyst said. "Sometimes admitting you can't do something and finding the strongest partner matters more than stubbornly holding on."

But from brand image perspective, this could be a crisis for Apple. Consumers buy Apple largely because of the perception that "it's the most advanced." If even Siri needs to use Google's technology, this perception could be shaken.

Deeper Anxiety: Overall AI Strategy Lags

Siri turning to Google is just the tip of the iceberg in Apple's AI dilemma.

In every hottest AI hardware track currently — AI PC, AI phone, AI glasses — Apple faces the embarrassment of "early but late."

AI PC: Microsoft's Copilot is fully rolled out, Apple's "Apple Intelligence" is still struggling

AI phone: Samsung and Google have launched their AI phones, Apple's AI features are scarce

AI glasses: Meta Quest has sold millions, Apple's AR glasses remain rumors of "coming soon"

"Apple's problem isn't that a single product lags," observed a tech industry watcher. "Their entire AI strategy lacks direction. They seem to not know what role to play in the AI era."

Epilogue

Back to the Siri-Google partnership.

Currently, this deal is still in the "discussion" stage — whether it ultimately happens remains uncertain. But one thing is clear: if it happens, it would be a landmark event — the world's most valuable tech company needs to borrow its rival's technology to save its core product.

This might speak louder than any earnings data: the competitive landscape in the AI era has fundamentally changed.

Reference: Business Standard, Startup News, The Information