Apple looks to license Google Gemini for iPhone, generative AI tools

Apple CEO Tim Cook with the only vision he’ll ever have
Apple is in talks to build Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence engine into iPhone, iPad, and other platforms, Bloomberg News reports citing “people familiar with the situation.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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The two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new features coming to the iPhone software this year, said the people… If a deal between Apple and Google comes to fruition, it would build upon the two companies’ search partnership. For years, Alphabet Inc.’s Google has paid Apple billions of dollars annually to make its search engine the default option in the Safari web browser on the iPhone and other devices.
A deal would give Gemini a key edge with billions of potential users. But it also may be a sign that Apple isn’t as far along with its AI efforts as some might have hoped — and threatens to draw further antitrust scrutiny of both companies.
Apple is preparing new capabilities as part of iOS 18 — the next version of the iPhone operating system — based on its own AI models. But those enhancements will be focused on features that operate on its devices, rather than ones delivered via the cloud. So Apple is seeking a partner to do the heavy lifting of generative AI, including functions for creating images and writing essays based on simple prompts.
Since early last year, Apple has been testing its own large language model — the technology behind generative AI — codenamed Ajax. Some employees also have been trying out a basic chatbot dubbed Apple GPT. But Apple’s technology remains inferior to tools from Google and other rivals, according to the people, making a partnership look like the better option.

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MacDailyNews Take: Apple having to deal with Google for its deeply flawed, literally racist AI is sad, yet totally predictable given the company’s laughably lost, scrambling, desperate-looking “leadership.” (In any event, Google should pay a huge amount annually to have generative AI access to Apple users. God only knows what this would do to Apple users’ privacy.)
Giving Google even more control is a ludicrous “solution” to Apple’s current quandary.
Apple pays and has been paying John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, millions upon millions of dollars for years. WTF of any import does he really do? WTF of any import has he really delivered? Have you used Siri lately? Yup, it’s still a steaming pile of dogshit.
Where’s Apple’s generative AI, John? “Too hard; too late; look for partners; gimme my paycheck and stock options.” AAPL shareholders need to start asking real questions of these executives, especially those who are supposed in charge of Apple’s “AI Strategy,” when the company clearly has none. How about some accountability for once?
What we have here is a company that was once led by a visionary who set the agenda for entire industries, now led by [stuck with] a reactive caretaker who heard somewhere that VR headsets and electric cars were the next big things (probably read it in “Wired”), so that’s what he had Apple do, while completely missing artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, and now is scrambling to catch up to something Steve Jobs would have focused on long before anyone ever even heard of OpenAI.
Steve Jobs bought Siri in April 2010. Steve Jobs would never have ignored Siri, basically let it rot, for well over a decade and counting. Steve Jobs would have made Siri the first conversational generative AI assistant years before anyone else. And the company would today be worth at least a trillion dollars more than it is currently. (Yes, we’re lowballing that estimate.) – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
Apple’s time a having a caretaker CEO to milk products and services conceived and created under Steve Jobs will, hopefully, draw to a close sooner than later.
See also:
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
With better management, Apple should be worth at least a trillion more than Microsoft currently. But, you can’t achieve those sort of results when you do things like miss transformative technologies like AI because you lack a visionary leader and have to resort to spending and scrambling madly trying to catch up to whatever you’ve blindly missed. – MaDailyNews, January 12, 2024
The difference between an operations guy following a static playbook — reacting to events instead of determining them — versus a visionary genius becomes ever more apparent with each passing year. – MacDailyNews, March 8, 2023
Let’s face it, Steve Jobs’ track record of picking Apple CEOs was less than stellar. – <a href=”https://macdailynews.com/2019/04/02/tim-cook-is-not-the-best-person-to-be-ceo-of-apple/>SteveJack, MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
See also: Tim Cook is not the best person to be CEO of Apple – April 2, 2019
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