Apple rarely admits failure, but its move to adopt Google’s powerful Gemini technology to overhaul Siri speaks volumes about the state of its internal AI division. For years, Siri has been the punchline of the voice assistant market. Now, to deliver a competitive product, Apple is setting aside its pride—and roughly $1 billion annually—to lean on the technology of its biggest rival. The real story, however, is Apple’s quiet attempt to bury this fact.
Inside Apple, the custom Google-built model that will power the revamped Siri has a sanitized name: AFM v10. This internal rebranding refers to the 10th version of Apple Foundation Models. As you can see, it totally avoids mentioning Google or Gemini altogether.
Siri’s revamp will secretly rely on Google Gemini
This secrecy, reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, reflects the huge competitive challenge Apple currently faces. They are adopting an AI model estimated at 1.2 trillion parameters. This tech leap completely overshadows Apple’s current in-house efforts. The adoption of Gemini is a major public acknowledgment that Apple’s years-long research to develop a reliable, competitive AI platform failed to meet the necessary market deadline.
The consequence is simple: Apple has arrived late to the modern AI race, and Google is already running far ahead. While Apple is busy disguising the Gemini brain within Siri, Google and others are actively scaling their technology. The Mountain View giant has been rapidly solidifying their market advantage in core AI services. Apple also recently lost several top AI researchers and model developers—poached by Meta mostly. This makes the job of closing this gap even harder.
Taking a shortcut for a better user experience
Credit is due to Apple for being pragmatic. Like their past decision to use Qualcomm modems despite years of bitter legal battles, Apple is doing what is necessary to ensure their iPhones deliver a worthy AI assistant experience. They have an ambitious internal goal to build their own trillion-parameter model, potentially ready sometime next year.
However, relying on a direct competitor for such a critical system core is risky. The delay means Apple’s highly anticipated new Siri, slated for the spring, will run on a Google brain. This will force the Cupertino giant into a risky game of catch-up. Google’s years-long head start in the AI field makes this transition exponentially more difficult. For now, users will enjoy the dramatic Siri improvement, likely unaware that the intelligence driving their iPhone now comes from the enemy camp.
