After a stuttering launch of its Apple Intelligence AI assistant, Apple appears to be on track to gain ground in 2026, according to reports over the weekend.
The well-connected Apple reporter Mark Gurman believes Apple has decided to let Google’s advanced Gemini models do some of the heavy lifting to help Siri achieve some of the long-promised gains Apple is yet to deliver on though it’s own Apple Intelligence efforts.
Reporting for Bloomberg, Gurman’s sources say a “custom Gemini model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud compute servers” that would help deliver answers to those deeply contextual requests Apple announced and then pushed back indefinitely amid question marks over its capabilities to build such a feature.
The requests involved simply asking for an ETA of a family member’s flight without having to trawl through the requisite text conversation. Google’s models could help fulfil this promise and, because the feature could run on Apple’s recently announced on-device Foundational Models, user data would stay off the cloud.
Gurman also reports Gemini might power the knowledge base that has constantly had Siri scrambling for ‘here’s what I found on the web’ results rather than providing native answers. That update could happen as soon as iOS 26.4, which is likely to arrive next spring if usual precedent is followed.
Furthermore, Bloomberg reports, Apple is planning “major updates” to Apple Intelligence in next year’s iOS 27 (etc.) releases. The company is also planning on detailing what Gurman refers to as the “broader” AI plan.
He writes: “On the software front, we’ll see iOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27 and other operating systems unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. They’ll be accompanied by major updates to Apple Intelligence and the broader AI strategy.”
It has been a stuttering and often controversial start to life for Apple Intelligence which has hurt the company’s reputation and left it behind key competitors for the next evolution of technology.
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