Siri overhaul with Gemini highlights race for AI dominance and regulatory concerns
Apple’s multi-year agreement with Alphabet Inc. to use Google Gemini AI models to power a long-awaited Siri overhaul shows an intensifying race among companies to harness artificial intelligence. Though Apple has been working on its own AI model, Apple Intelligence, it faced a series of setbacks. A tie-up with an existing AI powerhouse — ChatGPT or Gemini — was the most pragmatic choice, as waiting for the development of its own Large Language Model (LLM) could make it obsolete.
While Apple will continue to use its own AI models for on-device processing and foundation language models, the iPhone will use Gemini for more advanced capabilities. This deal signals that Big Tech, faced with spiralling compute costs, talent wars, and regulatory heat, is increasingly willing to close ranks — even when their consumer products compete head-on.
This is not the first time that top rivals have helped each other when the stakes were existential. In 1997, Microsoft invested in Apple and committed to supporting key software, a détente that helped stabilise Apple at a precarious moment. Windows OS and iMac OS were the main competitors in the personal computing space. However, there is a differentiator — the previous deal was on how operating systems worked, while the current deal is on how information is presented.
Globally, every phone is either run by the mobile operating system of Apple or Alphabet. Alphabet’s Android runs 80 per cent of smartphones, while Apple’s iPhone powers 20 per cent of premium smartphones. This deal will give Gemini an unquestioned monopoly on the mobile phone-based AI market.
This kind of unquestionable domination of the mobile phone’s thinking power, which has become people’s first port of call for help, could be quite unsettling. Unless it is properly regulated, Gemini will have unbridled power to form opinions on every subject under the sky and over the sky. If the world thinks alike, it will dim its vibrance.
