Among all the news of antitrust legislation and fluctuating competition, one story we didn’t see coming is the Apple-Google AI collaboration to bring the Google Gemini AI to the iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently confirmed that they were investing a tremendous amount of time and effort in bringing artificial intelligence to its customers sometime this year. Now we hear that instead of an in-house original, the company is looking at an Apple-Google AI collaboration for the iPhone instead. Another deal between the two major brands could be terrible for the industry that’s trying to shake their existing monopoly and it’s unclear if the US Justice system will ever allow a Google Gemini AI integration with Apple to go through. 

Apple-Google AI Collaboration In The Works: Apple’s AI Integrations Seem Plausible At Last

Bloomberg’s insider expert Mark Gurman recently spoke of the iOS 18 update potentially being the company’s biggest OS upgrade ever. but we weren’t sure exactly what shape this could take. Soon after, the Apple CEO indicated that the company was actively working on its generative AI systems, but he didn’t explain exactly what the company was up to. Now we’re back to seeing reports from Bloomberg that indicated Google Gemini AI’s integration with Apple could be what the company had hinted at with regard to working on AI.

From a business point of view, an Apple-Google AI collaboration does make sense, saving Apple the effort of designing its own AI and allowing them the convenience of using the advancements by Google to sell more of their own phones. The Google AI tool has been doing its best to stand out among competitors since its launch around December 2023, and for the most part, it has been successful. Those afraid of ChatGPT’s reign were more open to accepting Google’s AI. This has been largely thanks to our familiarity with the search engine, allowing Google to get away with a lot of things that others would have trouble with. 

It wasn’t an entirely perfect launch either, considering the Gemini AI has been receiving flak for its inaccuracies and hallucinations while responding to queries by users. Despite the reservations, Gemini appears to be capable of supporting an AI setup that could be sufficient for mobile-based tasks, similar to what’s available already on the Pixel 8 Pro or the Samsung S24 series. 

Before considering the Apple-Google AI collaboration, the iPhone maker also spoke to OpenAI to explore GhatGPT integration on their smartphones but perhaps the discussions fell through at an earlier stage. Early in February, we’d see the release of an Apple AI image tool capable of image editing through text prompt inputs. That had seemed like a promising sign of the company being on track to release its own full-fledged AI system, but perhaps that was the extent to which the tool was developed. Apple does have an internal AI system named Ajax in the works, but it seems insufficient to handle the tasks they want the iOS 18 update to perform.

Implications of the Google Gemini AI Integration with Apple

If we see the Apple-Google AI collaboration for the iPhone move forward, both companies would stand to gain from the deal. Apple will finally be able to bring AI features to the iPhone and catch up with the market that has been running towards artificial intelligence without it. For Google, this would mean an obvious boost in revenue from whatever Apple pays them to license the AI. Additionally, the number of users working with Gemini will only help the company improve its AI capabilities. 

This unconfirmed Apple-Google AI collaboration is not the first deal that has been struck between the two businesses. Google currently pays Apple a huge sum to be featured as the preferred search engine on Apple devices. This deal has already been rebuked for discouraging competition and preventing competitors from even having a chance of entering the market. The Verge, covering the initial reports around the Google antitrust trial, revealed that Google gave Apple a 36 percent cut of all search ad revenue that came from the Safari browser. A significant chunk of the revenue Google makes is from their ad revenue so the cut is quite significant no matter how you look at it.

If the cycle repeats itself with the Google Gemini AI integration with Apple, we could witness a great shift in the AI world with Google asserting a little more dominance in another realm. The Apple-Google AI Gemini partnership has not been signed officially yet so there could be room for change before any details are finalized. The US Department of Justice and the European Union have been closely monitoring Apple and Google’s shenanigans so we may just see the deal interrupted entirely before anything is settled. 

Bloomberg believes we won’t hear any more about the deal from official sources until Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. This may very well be true considering the company will try to save its announcements for the event once they’re fully finalized.

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