Google eyes Gemini-iPhone AI deal this year, Pichai tells court

(Bloomberg/Mark Gurman, Davey Alba and Leah Nylen) — Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in court proceedings Wednesday that he hopes that Gemini, his company’s AI service, will be added as a built-in option for iPhones this year.

Apple Inc.’s AI system, known as Apple Intelligence, uses its own models for the majority of artificial intelligence tasks available on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. But the company also has partnered with OpenAI’s ChatGPT for integration into Siri and Writing Tools, a feature for creating and editing text across the operating system.

During the court proceedings, Pichai said he is hopeful that Gemini, which competes with ChatGPT, will be added as an additional AI option on Apple products. Pichai said he held a series of conversations with Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook across 2024 and he hopes to have a deal done by the middle of this year.

Apple and Google have long been partners, with Google providing YouTube as a standalone app on the iPhone in 2007 and powering the maps app on Apple devices until 2012. But its biggest agreement to date has been about search in Safari, where Google is the default search engine. That’s the matter at the heart of the US government’s antitrust trial against Google, where Pichai made his remarks.

Apple is holding its annual developer conference the week of June 9, where it is preparing to introduce new versions of its operating systems. If a deal is agreed to, that is the likely venue for an announcement as part of iOS 19, iPadOS 19 and the next version of macOS.

Bloomberg News first reported on the talks between Apple and Google in March of last year. Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago that talks between the two companies remain on-going and a deal is expected to ultimately be reached.

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