Google is fairly desperate to appear not as a monolithic megacorporation squeezing all the competition out of the international market, given that it’s fighting for life right now in a heavily scrutinized trial over whether it holds an unfair monopoly over internet searching.
When the trial today veered into Google’s previously announced plans to bring Gemini, Google’s generative AI, to Apple devices, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was only too eager to confirm that those plans are not just still live but also that Gemini would begin rolling out to Apple devices later this year.
“He [Cook] was trying to understand our plans for how we’re evolving AI technologies, our roadmap, and as part of that, we talked about the Gemini app distribution as well,” said Pichai in response to Department of Justice lawyer Veronica Onyema’s questioning.
Can Google prove that it plays nice with Apple, one of its arch-competitors? Nice enough not to be broken up into separate companies by the US government? Keep your eyes glued to the 2020s’ favorite new soap, As Silicon Valley Turns.
a solid confirmation
It isn’t the first time we’ve heard talk of Gemini coming to Apple devices, although we haven’t heard much since Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, said last summer that Gemini could appear on iPhones at some point.
“We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that’s great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding. And so we want to enable users ultimately to bring a model of their choice,” said Federighi at the time.”
“And so we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean, nothing to announce right now, but that’s our direction.”
If you thought that sounded all very non-committal, then join the club. It sounded more like pie-in-the-sky spitballing rather than a leak. It barely even qualified as a rumor. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already been integrated into Apple Intelligence, so Gemini wouldn’t be the first AI integration, nor will it be replacing ChatGPT within Apple Intelligence.
Google is taking a victory lap with the news that Gemini is somewhat imminent, but last year, when Federighi was kicking around the idea of adding these AI integrations, he said, “We wanted to start with the best” when asking why ChatGPT would be first on the list. Ouch.
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