Apple Inc. will launch a rebuilt Siri assistant powered by a custom Google Gemini AI model during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday.
This partnership marks a significant shift in Apple's approach to artificial intelligence, as the company leverages a competitor's technology to modernize its primary virtual assistant. The move aims to close the gap between Siri and other generative AI tools currently dominating the market.
The new version of Siri is integrated into the upcoming iOS 27. To achieve this, Apple entered into a multi-year licensing partnership with Google. The agreement for the Gemini model costs Apple roughly $1 billion per year [1].
Technical specifications for the integration reveal a high-capacity system. The custom Gemini model used to power Siri has approximately 1.2 trillion parameters [2]. This scale allows the assistant to handle more complex queries and provide more nuanced responses than previous iterations.
The announcement comes as part of the WWDC 2026 event, where Apple typically previews the next generation of its operating systems and hardware. The integration of Google's technology suggests a strategic decision to prioritize immediate capability over the development of a fully proprietary large language model for the assistant's core logic.
Apple has not detailed the specific duration of the multi-year contract beyond the annual cost. The company is positioning the rebuilt Siri as a central feature of the iOS 27 ecosystem, emphasizing a more intuitive user experience driven by Google's AI architecture.
“Apple will launch a rebuilt Siri assistant powered by a custom Google Gemini AI model.”
This collaboration represents a pragmatic pivot for Apple, acknowledging that Google's lead in large language model development provides a faster path to competitiveness than internal development alone. By paying a premium for Gemini, Apple secures a high-parameter model to maintain the utility of its ecosystem while potentially continuing to develop its own native AI capabilities in the background.
