Apple is in talks with Google about using the search giant's generative artificial intelligence model called Gemini for its next iPhone, as the company races to embrace a technology that has upended the tech industry.
The talks are preliminary and the exact scope of a possible agreement has not been defined, three people with knowledge of the discussions said. Apple has also held talks with other artificial intelligence companies, one of these people said, as it seeks to harness the power of a large language model capable of analyzing large amounts of data and generating text on its own.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised investors that the company will introduce new generative ai capabilities this year. The company's smartphone rivals, Samsung and Google, have already added Gemini to their newest devices for editing videos and summarizing audio recordings.
Apple and Google declined to comment. ai-tools?srnd=technology-vp” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Bloomberg They previously reported on their conversations.
An agreement between Apple and Google on generative ai would expand one of the longest-running technology partnerships. Since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, Google has been instrumental in the device's success. It initially provided Google Maps for navigation and then struck a deal to become the default search engine in the iPhone's Safari browser, a lucrative deal for which Google pays Apple more than $18 billion a year.
Google's discussions to provide generative ai capabilities for the iPhone would be the latest example of how it is filling a gap in Apple's products. Apple's effort to develop its own large language model, the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, has lagged behind, two people familiar with its development said.
Apple's delay in launching an ai product has proven costly. After a decade as the world's most valuable public company, it was dethroned this year by Microsoft, which has aggressively pursued ai. The technology has been heralded for its potential to disrupt business and create trillions of dollars in economic value.
Despite its delays, Apple has the potential to be a big player in ai. The company has more than two billion devices in active use, making it an attractive partner for Google and others. Its reputation for protecting customers' private information could also come in handy in a future where ai services help manage people's calendars or health data.
A deal could bring the Gemini model to iPhones around the world, giving Google access to a massive user base and making generative ai even more common. Virtually overnight, Google could have more consumers using its ai than its main rival, OpenAI, making ChatGPT a tempting prospect.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to artificial intelligence systems.)
Google's selection of Apple as an ai supplier would be a crucial vote of confidence in the search giant after a series of setbacks in its ai ambitions. The company's first ai chatbot, Bard, debuted to lackluster reviews last March and struggled to attract as many users as ChatGPT.
In February, Google introduced a new chatbot, Gemini. The chatbot ran into trouble last month when users discovered that its image generator produced illustrations of historical figures that were not racially accurate and refused in most cases to generate images of white people, leading to accusations of bias. Google disabled the ability to create images of people and promised to fix the problem.
In a note on Tuesday, Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, called the deal between Apple and Google a win-win, as it would give Apple generative artificial intelligence for iPhones and validate Google's work on Gemini. He also said that Apple did not have to own an ai model in iPhones to benefit from it and could instead receive a commission from Google, which currently charges $19.99 a month for its Gemini Advanced app.
Companies have not yet taken advantage of generative ai. The costs associated with running large language models in the cloud are staggering, and consumers and enterprise customers are just beginning to pay for the emerging technology. But they are optimistic that profits will increase as the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems improve and the costs of building data centers to power the systems decrease.
A new deal between Apple and Google could draw scrutiny from US regulators. The Justice Department is in the final stages of a lawsuit against Google for harming competition by paying Apple to be the default search engine on the iPhone and other services. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who is presiding over the bench trial, is expected to issue a verdict this year.
