A new report on Apple’s partnership with Google to have Gemini power the new Siri appears to confirm speculation that the iPhone maker is paying around a billion dollars a year for the deal.
It also claims that ChatGPT provider OpenAI made a conscious decision to decline the opportunity to provide the intelligence behind Siri …
Google’s Gemini models powering the new Siri
Apple this week confirmed reports that Google’s Gemini AI models will be used to power the new Siri in an announcement clearly aimed at investors, but also good news for customers.
Google said that this is a multi-year contract, while Apple noted that the Gemini models will run on its own Private Cloud Compute servers in order to maintain privacy.
It has been speculated that Apple is paying around $1bn a year for the deal, and a new report seems to at least roughly confirm this.
Apple to pay billions
A Financial Times report says that the deal is a multi-billion one.
The deal would be structured in the form of a cloud computing contract, which could lead to Apple paying several billion dollars to Google over time, a person familiar with the agreement told the FT.
Top comment by JumpingJack
Gemini 3 is by far the most scalable top-tier model with several times lower cost per token than the competition. Powering Siri with any other model would be extremely unsustainable. No wonder OpenAI "declined".
While this is all rather vague, multiple billions over multiple years is consistent with the idea of somewhere in the region of $1B per year. If accurate, it seems a good deal for the Cupertino company, given that it is receiving more than 20 times as much from the search giant.
OpenAI reportedly decided against Apple partnership
The report also claims that OpenAI made a conscious decision to refrain from partnering with Apple.
OpenAI declined to comment. But a person close to the company said it had taken “a conscious decision to not become the custom model provider for Apple” in the autumn of last year and instead focus on building its own AI device to leapfrog the big tech companies.
It’s a near certainty that Apple and OpenAI at least had discussions about it, but it’s not clear whether the iPhone maker actually offered the company a contract. The wording allows for the possibility of OpenAI turning down a deal, but it may merely mean it had decided to decline were Apple to make an offer.
The AI device referred to in the piece is a still mysterious piece of hardware designed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive.
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