Apple Said to Partner with Google to Develop AI Web Search Feature for Siri ...

TMTPOST -- Apple Inc. May introduce a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature rivaling OpenAI for its digital voice assistant Siri next year, a report on Wednesday suggested.

Credit：Apple

Apple is working on a AI-backed web search system and planning to launch the new tool and integrate it into Siri next year, Bloomberg reported. The new system, reportedly called World Knowledge Answers by Apple insiders, will offer an AI-powered summarization system designed to make results more quickly digestible and more accurate than what’s offered by the current Siri. Its interface was said to makes use of text, photos, video and local points of interest.

Apple aims to release the new feature in the spring as part of a overhaul of Siri. The revamped Siri will include a planner, which integrate voice or text prompts, a search system scanning the web or user data, and a summarizer to all of the information for users, according to the report. The new Siri thus will reportedly enable to take advantage of personal data and on-screen content to better fulfill queries, and offer more precise navigation of users’ devices via voice.

The report indicated Apple is relying on Google to develop the core components of the Siri. Apple was said to adopt a custom-built Google Gemini model for the summarizer and the two companies are working together on fine-tuning and testing it. Apple and Google were reported to have signed a formal agreement this week to assess and test the Google model for Siri. Apple is also considering using the Google model for the planner, while still evaluating Anthropic’s Claude or in-house models, according to the report.

Apple was reported in February that it still worked on some big AI-powered upgrade to Siri, but in stead of rollout with iOS18.4, they may be limited or delayed until iOS18.5.A report in March said Apple’s current iOS version of Siri doesn’t work as smoothly as it could.

According to the report, the modernized Siri, internally known as “LLM (large language model) Siri”, would merge the two brains into a new architecture that can handle both simple and legacy Siri commands like setting timers, and the advanced AI-powered queries, like carrying out tasks across apps using context like personal details and what’s on your screen. Apple plans to merge these two systems and release a new Siri architecture under iOS19, but it’s now running behind and won’t be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.