Using Gemini to enhance Siri: A new shift in Apple's voice assistant

With fierce competition in the world of artificial intelligence , Apple took an unconventional step by using Gemini to develop Siri, demonstrating that the future is made through bold partnerships and continuous innovation.

With this transformation, the company is not only rebuilding its voice assistant, but is also making its mark in the field of digital assistants, to give users an interactive experience that is advanced in performance and understanding of real human needs.

Siri: Apple's journey in developing artificial intelligence Apple launched its voice assistant Siri on October 4, 2011 with the iPhone 4S, marking a turning point in the world of voice assistants.

Since then, it has continued to invest in developing Siri, but intense competition with Google Assistant and Alexa has revealed clear gaps in Siri's capabilities, especially with regard to complex search tasks and multilingual translation.

With the rise of advanced generative AI models such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google, Apple realized that relying solely on its internal models might not enable it to achieve the required qualitative leap in Siri's performance, which prompted it to seek strong strategic partnerships in the field of artificial intelligence .

Using Gemini to develop Siri: Why did Apple choose Google's advanced model? When Apple was looking for technological solutions to take its voice assistant to a new level, it found what it was looking for in Google’s Gemini model, an advanced artificial intelligence model with 1.2 trillion parameters, significantly outperforming its traditional models, which do not exceed 150 billion parameters for the cloud version and 3 billion parameters for the local version.

Its evaluations included models from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, but Gemini's performance in natural language processing, context understanding, summarizing, and translation was outstanding; along with its customizability to work exclusively on Apple's cloud servers to ensure user data protection.

Therefore, the strategic decision was made to use Gemini to develop Siri, not only to improve the assistant's performance in summarizing information and planning, but also to ensure complete user privacy and enhance the artificial intelligence functions in smart devices without exposing data to any third party.

What are the details of the agreement between Apple and Gemini? The company agreed to pay Google $1 billion annually for access to a customized version of the Gemini model, a small fraction of what Google pays Apple for making Google's search engine the default on its devices.

The average user will not notice any direct Google influence in Siri after the agreement; it will still appear as a completely Apple-owned voice assistant, with no reference to Google's role.

The technical specifications in the agreement ensure that Gemini will run only on Apple’s own cloud servers, away from any Google servers, which means that user data will always remain within Apple’s secure environment.

Furthermore, Gemini's use in developing Siri will be limited to some key functions; specifically in information summarization tasks and planning the execution of complex tasks. The rest of Siri's features will continue to depend on internal artificial intelligence models that it develops itself.

How will Gemini improve Siri's performance? With Gemini integrated into the Siri ecosystem, Siri is expected to see significant improvements in several areas:

Understanding complex queries: Siri will be able to better understand complex questions and requests and provide logical and seamless responses. Summarizing and processing: Siri can now summarize articles, messages, and long documents more efficiently. Advanced translation: A clear improvement in the accuracy and naturalness of text and audio translations. Managing complex tasks: Siri will be able to handle complex tasks such as scheduling meetings, processing emails, and planning travel based on user instructions. Intelligent interaction: A better ability to deal with unconventional language formulations and relative ambiguity in questions. Integration with applications: More intelligent integration with various Apple applications and providing personalized suggestions. Privacy and security: a key focus of the agreement The company also gave special importance to privacy and security issues in its agreement with Google. A customized version of Gemini was developed to operate exclusively within Apple's cloud servers, to ensure that Google or any other third party does not have access to any personal data of users, and strong encryption protocols will be applied to protect data from any potential breach.

Siri will learn from local data on the user's device without sharing details with any third party, to increase user confidence in Apple products , especially in markets that are increasingly concerned about privacy and personal data issues.

Competition with other voice assistants With Gemini being used to develop Siri, it is expected to achieve an improvement in capabilities compared to competing voice assistants, with the qualitative leap expected to include faster task execution and greater depth in analyzing queries.

Gemini can expand Siri's capabilities into specialized areas such as health, education, e-commerce, and scientific research, meeting the diverse needs of Apple platform users.

Launch timing The new Gemini-powered Siri is expected to launch in the spring of 2026, according to Bloomberg reports, and the timing gives the company a chance to complete development and comprehensive testing before the product is released to the market.

Future challenges and opportunities Apple faces a number of challenges with this ambitious partnership, which are as follows:

Financial sustainability: The commitment to pay $1 billion annually to Google requires constant assurance that the return the company makes from using Gemini to develop Siri is equal to or greater than this huge investment. Independent development: Despite the agreement with Google, it has not given up on its ambition to develop its own independent artificial intelligence model, and the company is still working on a private cloud model that is expected to be ready for consumer applications soon, so the collaboration with Google is a transitional step and not a final one. Linguistic and geographical expansion: Siri’s success depends on the model’s compatibility with all old and new Apple devices, in addition to strengthening support for different languages and dialects, including Arabic. Distributing benefits globally: Another challenge is achieving the same level of quality and high user experience in all markets around the world without delay. Using Gemini to develop Siri gives Apple new power in the world of voice assistants, and establishes a smarter and safer generation of smart services, despite the challenges of integration and investment, thus securing Apple a position as a leader in global artificial intelligence innovations .