Apple secretly borrows Google’s brain for Siri’s next act
by Nick Farrell on04 November 2025
Forced to rely on Gemini because its own AI can barely tie its shoes
The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple has quietly admitted what everyone in tech already suspected, that Siri’s still as thick as mince, and only Google can save it.
According to serial Apple whisperer Mark Gurman, the upcoming Siri overhaul due in iOS 26.4 next spring will secretly run on Google’s Gemini models. The means that Jobs’ Mob’s shiny new “private and secure” AI is actually a Google-powered parrot hiding under an Apple logo.
Behind the scenes, Apple’s servers will host custom Gemini models on what it grandly calls Private Cloud Compute. These will handle most of the heavy lifting for Siri’s so-called “smart” features, including answering personal questions like “find my favourite Coldplay song” without falling over or giving you a recipe for pancakes instead.
The revamped Siri apparently runs on three major parts: a query planner, a knowledge search system and a summariser. The brains behind the planner and summariser is Google Gemini. Cupertino’s models will only handle local on-device fluff, like indexing your calendar and pretending to care about privacy. Hopefully it will have nothing to do with the clock, as Apple software providers have been really bad at that.
Gurman says the new knowledge system the bit that lets Siri fake actual understanding of world topics might be powered by Google’s kit. Which means the only thing “Apple” about this upgrade is the marketing.
Of course, Jobs’ Mob insists that everything is perfectly private because the Gemini models will live on Apple’s servers, not Google’s. This is supposed to make us forget that the world’s richest tech firm is effectively renting its rival’s brainpower to make its voice assistant less embarrassing.
Bloomberg reckons Apple won’t advertise this partnership for obvious reasons. The company will push it as an entirely home-grown innovation, just with Google quietly doing the thinking in the background while Siri gets all the credit.
Samsung already pulls the same trick with its so-called “Galaxy AI” features, which are basically Gemini in a different hat. Apparently, even Apple has now decided that pretending to innovate is easier than actually doing it.
The move is clearly a pragmatic one for Jobs’ Mob, which has been flailing for years trying to make Siri sound less like a confused toaster. Its large language models aren’t yet fit for public consumption, so it’s outsourcing competence to Google while loudly pretending it isn’t.
Apple is expected to unveil the “new Siri” in March or April next year alongside iOS 26.4 and a new smart home display that will presumably let Siri mishear you in larger, more expensive ways.
For all its privacy posturing and AI theatrics, the reality is simple. When even Apple needs Google to make its assistant sound intelligent, you know the cult’s reality distortion field is running on fumes.
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